Join us on May 15th at 6pm for our Membership meeting. This month we have Jerry Eichhorst. This presentation will use a combination of maps, old and recent pictures, and emigrant diary quotes to share the best of the Oregon and California Trails in Idaho. There are hundreds of miles of emigrant trails in southern Idaho used by people migrating with covered wagons to the Pacific Ocean in the 1840s to 1860s. Several cutoffs and alternative routes traversed Idaho through the era as better wagon roads were sought by the emigrants. The humorous, informative, and tragic stories of the emigrants bring these trails to life.

Jerry Eichhorst is an amateur historian with a passion for the Oregon and California Trails. He has been involved with these emigrant trails in Idaho for over 30 years. As a diary researcher with over 2700 accounts of emigrants traveling in Idaho, he has made numerous discoveries about the trails in Idaho through extensive research and compiling of the accounts. Jerry has been President of the Idaho chapter (www.IdahoOCTA.org) of the Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA) for over 15 years.