The Oregon Trail 1971

Is it still worth playing?

Three Carleton College students wrote this text based strategy game in 1971 to teach schoolchildren about 19th century pioneer life. They were Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger, and the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium produced it from 1975. You lead a wagon train of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon, in 1847. After buying supplies, you play about 12 rounds of decisions, each standing for two weeks on the trail, with food, bullets, clothing, miscellaneous supplies and cash tracked along with the distance and the date. You can hunt, sometimes stop at a fort to buy supplies and choose how much to eat. Planning a trip that can go wrong is a lesson that still holds today.