The Oregon Trail-
How did they get to South Puget Sound?

Michael T. Simmons and the exploration party returned to Fort Vancouver, where they met up with George Bush and the rest of the travelers.  In late September 1845, the Simmons-Bush party set out for the falls of the Deschutes River, where they would finally start their new settlement.

In order to get from Fort Vancouver to South Puget Sound, they would have to travel on the Cowlitz Trail.  In 1845, the Cowlitz Trail was little more than a muddy footpath.  Native Americans had used this route on for hundreds of years on their trading routes, and Hudson’s Bay Company traders used it to travel between Fort Vancouver and Fort Nisqually.  The Simmons-Bush party were the first settlers to use it, and the first to bring covered wagons on the path.  Although the Cowlitz Trail was the shortest part of the journey, it would prove to be the hardest of all. 

The first step was to raft down the Columbia River to reach the Cowlitz River.  Then they had to load all their belongings on canoes and paddle upstream, against the current.  The Cowlitz River could only be traveled for about six miles to Cowlitz Landing, near the present-day town of Toledo.  Then the rapids became too dangerous to travel by boat and the settlers had to walk 58 miles to reach the falls of the Deschutes.  Isaac Ingalls Stevens, the first territorial governor of Washington, also traveled up the Cowlitz River in 1853.  His wife, who came a year later, described the journey this way:

"We were placed in the canoe with great care, so as to balance it evenly, as it was frail and upset easily.  At first the novelty, motion, and watching our Indian [guides] paddle so deftly, they seized their poles and pushed along over shallow places, keeping up a low, sweet singing as they glided along, was amusing.  As we were sitting flat on the bottom of the canoe, the position became irksome and painful.  We were all day long on the Cowlitz River.  At night I could not stand on my feet for some time after landing."
(from An Early History of Thurston County by Georgiana Blankenship)

On their way to Cowlitz Landing, the Simmons-Bush party may have stayed at the Jackson House.  John R. Jackson built this house in 1845.  Today it is the oldest standing house in Washington and part of Lewis and Clark State Park.  Many travelers stopped here to rest, including Governor Stevens and Ulysses S. Grant. 

As the Cowlitz Trail became more traveled, other hotels and inns popped up along the way, including a famous hotel called “Hardbread’s.”  Ezra Meeker described it this way:

"Hardbread’s is a curious name for a hotel, you will say; so it is, but the name grew out of the fact that Gardner, the old widower that kept 'bachelor’s hall' at the mouth of the Toutle River, fed his customers on hardtack [hard, bland biscuits made of flour and water] three times a day, if perchance anyone was unfortunate enough to take three meals at his place … I found the little wife had not fared any better than I had on the trail, and in fact, not so well, for the floor of the cabin was a good deal harder than the sand spit where I had passed the night, with plenty of pure, fresh air, while she, in a closed cabin, in the same room with many others, could neither boast of fresh air, nor freedom from creeping things that make life miserable.  With her shoes for a pillow, a shawl for covering, small wonder the report came, 'I did not sleep a wink last night.' "