It has taken 129 years to publish Levi Scott’s reminiscence of leading the first pioneers on the Applegate Trail. Emigrating to Oregon in 1844, Scott soon joined other Willamette Valley settlers, including Applegate brothers Jesse and Lindsay, in searching for a southern alternative to the Oregon Trail’s perilous Columbia River route. After reaching Fort Hall in today’s Idaho, Jesse Applegate encouraged 75 wagons to take the route also known as Applegate’s Cut-off and the Southern Emigrant Road.
Scott led the first 75 wagons and some 150 pioneers on the primitive trail in 1846.
Years later, Scott wrote his 91-page reminisces and at age 90 asked published pioneer Judge James Layton Collins to help him get them published.
Scott’s son Dean took the original manuscript and Collin’s expanded version with him when he moved to Alaska. In 1994, a high school teacher engaged by Polk County advocates of the trail name “Southern Route to Oregon” retrieved the battered manuscripts from rustic storage in Alaska.
Finally in 2015, Western Washington University published the book titled Wagons to the Willamette: Captain Levi Scott and the Southern Route to Oregon, 129 years after Scott first asked Collins to edit and polish the manuscript.
Source: Scott, Levi and James Layton Collins. “Wagons to the Willamette: Captain Levi Scott and the Southern Route to Oregon 1844-1847.” Edited by Stafford J. Hazalett. WSU Press, Pullman, Wash. 2015. Print; Lalande, Jeff. "Applegate Trail." Oregon Encyclopedi. Portland State University and Oregon Historical Society, 2016. Web. 18 Mar. 2016.
