Lindsay Applegate
| Lindsay Applegate | |
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| Member of the Oregon House of Representatives | |
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In office 1862-1863 |
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| Constituency | Jackson County |
| Personal details | |
| Born | September 18, 1808 Kentucky |
| Died | November 28, 1892 (aged 84) Klamath Falls, Oregon |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Elizabeth |
| Occupation | Indian agent |
Lindsay Applegate (September 18, 1808 – November 28, 1892) was a pioneer known for his participation in blazing the Applegate Trail, an alternative end of Oregon Trail in the U.S. state of Oregon. The trail was blazed with his brothers Charles and Jesse in 1846. Charles Applegate was not a member of the party that blazed the Applegate Trail from the Willamette Valley to the Humboldt River. According to an original manuscript written by Lindsay Applegate in 1877, the members of the expedition were: Capt. Levi Scott, John Scott (son of Levi), Henry Boygus, Lindsay Applegate, Jesse Applegate, Benjamin Burch, John Owens, John Jones, Robert Smith, Samuel Goodhue, Moses "Black" Harris, David Goff, Benit Osburn, William Sportsman, and William Parker.
Lindsay Applegate was born to Daniel and Rachel Applegate in Kentucky on September 18, 1808. The family moved to the Osage Valley in Missouri in 1820, where they farmed. In 1831, Lindsay married Elizabeth Miller, whose sister Melinda was married to Lindsay's older brother Charles, and they had six sons. He fought in the Black Hawk War against Native Americans in 1832.
In 1843, Lindsay and Charles traveled along with their younger brother Jesse after they all sold their farms in Missouri, bought several hundred head of cattle and set out for Oregon at the behest of Jesse's good friend Robert Shortess. At that time, the final hundred or so miles beyond the Wascopam Mission were by boat through dangerous winds, rapids, and eddies on the Columbia River.
Whirlpools looking like deep basins in the river, the lapping, splashing, and rolling of waves... Presently there was a wail of anguish, a shriek, and a scene of confusion in our boat that no language can describe. The boat we were watching disappeared and we saw the man and boys struggling in the water.
Lindsay's nine-year-old son Warren perished, as did Jesse's ten-year-old son Edward, who did not know how to swim. Lindsay wrote, "We resolved if we remained in the country, to find a better way for others who might wish to emigrate." Additional fatalities in the 1844 and 1845 immigration seasons further stirred up settlers and inspired many to search for alternate routes.
Lindsay and fourteen other settlers established the South Emigrant Trail between Fort Hall in Idaho and the Willamette Valley via northern Nevada through southern Oregon where Ashland and Roseburg now lie. The intents of this route were to be safer than the Columbia River, encourage settlers to western Oregon, avoid the Hudson's Bay Company controlled area, provide a longer travel season, and steer clear of the disputed English territory north of the Columbia, which most settlers expected would become the US-British Columbia border.
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