The Oregon Trail is a 2,000-mile (3,200 km) historic east-west large wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon.
The Oregon Trail was laid by fur trappers and traders from about 1811 to 1840 and was only passable on foot or by horseback. By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. Wagon trails were cleared further and further west, eventually reaching all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. What came to be called the Oregon Trail was complete, even as improved roads, "cutouts", ferries and bridges made the trip faster and safer almost every year. From various "jumping off points" branched in Missouri, Iowa or Nebraska Territory, the routes converged along the lower Platte River Valley near Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory and led to rich farmlands west of the Rocky Mountains.
The United States is a country in the Northern Hemisphere, Western Hemisphere, and the Eastern Hemisphere. It consists of forty-eight contiguous states in North America, Alaska, a peninsula which forms the northwestern most part of North America, and Hawaii, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. There are several United States territories in the Pacific and Caribbean. The term "United States", when used in the geographical sense, means the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands of the United States. The country shares land borders with Canada and Mexico and maritime (water) borders with Russia, Cuba, and the Bahamas in addition to Canada and Mexico.
The Willamette Valley (// is the most populated region in the state of Oregon of the United States. Located in the state's northwest, the region is surrounded by tall mountain ranges to the east, west and south. The valley's floor is broad, flat and fertile because of Ice Age conditions. Located centrally inside the large alluvial-deposited soils of the Willamette River drainage basin, the valley spreads far from the river banks to both the east and west barrier ranges as the river proceeds northward from its emergence from the Calapooya Mountains near Eugene to the confluence of the Willamette with the Columbia River at Portland. The valley's waterways and tributary streams and valleys were of great importance for water transport in the development of the Oregon Territory and young state until well past the arrival of modern roads and highways.
The valley holds several of the state's principal cities. A majority of the state's population lives within the basin, where one or more massive Ice Age floods left the valley floor thick with flood-carried sediments, making the valley extremely fertile. A massively productive agricultural area, the valley was widely publicized from the 1820s as a 'promised land' of the 'flowing milk and honey' sort and became, at Oregon City, the destination of choice for the oxen-drawn wagon trains of organized emigrants traveling west on the perilous and rough 1,800 to 2,100 miles (2,900 to 3,400 km) of roadbeds of the Oregon Trail in the 1840s–1880s.
The Geography of Pennsylvania varies from sea level marine estuary to mountainous plateau, is significant for its natural resources and ports, and is notable for its role in the history of the United States.
Joyce Kilmer (born as Alfred Joyce Kilmer; 6 December 1886 – 30 July 1918) was an American writer and poet mainly remembered for a short poem titled "Trees" (1913), which was published in the collection Trees and Other Poems in 1914. Though a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his Roman Catholic religious faith, Kilmer was also a journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor. While most of his works are largely unknown, a select few of his poems remain popular and are published frequently in anthologies. Several critics—including both Kilmer's contemporaries and modern scholars—have disparaged Kilmer's work as being too simple and overly sentimental, and suggested that his style was far too traditional, even archaic. Many writers, including notably Ogden Nash, have parodied Kilmer's work and style—as attested by the many parodies of "Trees".
At the time of his deployment to Europe during World War I, Kilmer was considered the leading American Roman Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation, whom critics often compared to British contemporaries G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) and Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953).:p.27 He enlisted in the New York National Guard and was deployed to France with the 69th Infantry Regiment (the famous "Fighting 69th") in 1917. He was killed by a sniper's bullet at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31. He was married to Aline Murray, also an accomplished poet and author, with whom he had five children.
Butler is city and county seat of Butler County in the US state of Pennsylvania, situated 35 miles (56 km) north of Pittsburgh and part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 13,757. Butler was named the 7th best small town in America by Smithsonian Magazine in May 2012.
Butler was named for Maj. Gen. Richard Butler, who fell at the Battle of the Wabash, also known as St. Clair's Defeat, in western Ohio in 1791.
In journalism, a human interest story is a feature story that discusses a person or people in an emotional way. It presents people and their problems, concerns, or achievements in a way that brings about interest, sympathy or motivation in the reader or viewer.
Human interest stories may be "the story behind the story" about an event, organization, or otherwise faceless historical happening, such as about the life of an individual soldier during wartime, an interview with a survivor of a natural disaster, a random act of kindness or profile of someone known for a career achievement.