Oregon Trail

Okay, there’s a new buzzword at work. Or buzz phrase. Or buzz cultural reference. 

It’s the Oregon Trail computer game. 


It was designed in the seventies, but it didn’t become a popular technique for teaching the  perils of the Oregon Trail until the Apple 2e version came out, just a few years after I graduated high school.

Instead, my history teacher taught us about the Oregon Trail with a five-day long slide presentation of photos he’d taken of the trail.  I can tell you the one thing that I remember: whenever he flipped to a slide of a lonely grave, and there were many, he would say, “This person probably died of cholera. And how do we get cholera, kids?”

”BY DIGGING YOUR WELL TOO CLOSE TO SOMEONE ELSE’S OUTHOUSE,” we would shout. 

Clearly there was cholera, and, as you see above, for the younger folks, dysentery  — but does anyone remember anything else about the Oregon trail?

The game certainly made an impression on the young(er) people at work: it is THE metaphor for a journey. And they can’t talk about it without making funny dysentery references.

“Cholera,” I whisper to myself.

Comments

[KC]

The metaphor for a journey? I played Oregon Trail, but I am still apparently too old; I mostly remember 1. how money made almost everything so much easier (true), and 2. how you could cheat the game through winter by hunting every day, since for whatever reason your party did not get sick and die on hunting days in the version I played.

Okay, that and how not-worthwhile it is to shoot squirrels...KC

[TheQueen]

KC - I’ll have to see if the young people at work know about that hack.

[KC]

There were multiple versions of Oregon Trail, so I don't know how widespread (or not) it was, but I'd be interested if they found that or not in their versions. (and I have no idea which version it was, but it was not the single-color version as per your image)

[KC]

(i am also now dimly recalling that "trading" may have also not clicked-over the "party sick/dead" probability meter? I think I puttered through at least two games-with-a-winter-in-the-middle via hunting/trading...)

[TheQueen]

KC - at the time people were wearing kerchiefs to Zoom meetings, now of course no one is mentioning it.

[KC]

The mysteries of fads.

[Allison McCaskill]

Chigger bites?

[TheQueen]

KC - I missed the meeting was entirely about this topic, but I imagine everyone has abandoned the imagery.
Allison - there were chigger bites in the game? Really? Because I’ve had chigger bites and it would be a close call between that and dysentery.