Oregon-California Trails Association | Sharp, Cornelia A. – Crossing the Plains from Missouri to Oregon in 1852

Sharp, Cornelia A. – Crossing the Plains from Missouri to Oregon in 1852

Merrill J. Mattes Collection·

This day we advanced some fifteen miles along the Sweetwater. There has been good grass along the valley, but it has been eat off. The road today was very sandy. The scenery is sublime, with a large mass of granite on the right and high mountains on the left. Tonight we had a delightful camp within a few steps of the creek. The weather is
quite cold. The wind blowed unusually hard tonight, blowed down our tent. ~ Cornelia A. Sharp, Sunday, July 4, 1852

The diary of Cornelia Sharp’s account of her travels from Missouri to Oregon.
10 Pages

The collection was begun in 1991 by the late Merrill J. Mattes, a co-founder of the Oregon-California Trails Association. That original nucleus was a result of a generous donation from Merrill and reflected his many years as an award-winning National Park Service historian and also included works of his own authorship. The collection is housed at the national Frontier Trails Museum in Independence, Missouri. Here, you have access to many of the original trail diaries he collected in digital form.