Price Of Getting To California

What with storms at the Cape, illness, TERRIBLE food, problems with the sailors & the women (you thought wagon drivers were bad), the ocean route was probably not the best choice. Plus, the cost and effort of getting the women to a seaport (they were in Chicago, IIRC) would've made that option even less attractive.

"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's living!!!"
Augustus McCrae

There were three ways to California at that time.

1.) One could take a ship down the east coast of South America, around Cape Horn, and then up the west coast of South America and the United States to California. Rounding Cape Horn was and is dangerous due to frequent storms and many ships were lost in trying.

2.) In the second option, one could sail down the east coast to what is now Panama (it was part of Columbia then). You would then take a horse/mule train through the jungles to the Pacific coast. The jungle trek would take about a week and would expose travelers to heat, insects, and malaria. Many died on this part of the journey. Once one reached the Pacific coast, steam ships were waiting to take passengers to California. By the mid-1850s a railroad was built through the jungle, making the trip a matter of hours and lessened the chance of malaria. However, at the time this movie takes place, the women would have had to risk the trek through the jungle, not to mention hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic.

3.) The third option was to take a wagon train across the prairies, deserts, and mountains. As far as danger was concerned, this route was probably equal to the other two. It would have taken roughly the same amount of time as the sea voyage, but, thought fairly expensive, less so than by going by ship. (In traveling by wagon train, one would pay for the wagon, horses or mules, and food for the journey. Going by ship would mean that you would pay a third party to supply you with food and transportation. And since the ship operators were in this business for a profit, it would have been more expensive than going by wagon train. The route across Panama was the shortest of the three, but heat, humidity, snakes, bugs, jaguars, and malaria made this the least popular.

For most of those who traveled west to California or Oregon, wagon train was the most practical in terms of money, time, and even danger, and that is why wagon trains were taken more often than the other two routes.

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