The Oregon Trail is a series of educational computer games. The first game was originally developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974. The original game was designed to teach 8th grade schoolchildren about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. The player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley via a covered wagon in 1848.

In 1971, Don Rawitsch, a senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, taught an 8th grade history class as a student teacher.^[1][2] He used HP Time-Shared BASIC running on an HP 2100 minicomputer to write a computer program to help teach the subject.^[3] Rawitsch recruited two friends and fellow student teachers, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann, to help.^[4]

The original core gameplay concepts that have been included in every subsequent version are initial supply purchase, occasional food hunting, occasional supply purchase at forts, inventory management of supplies, variable travel speed depending upon conditions, frequent misfortunes, and game over upon death or successfully reaching Oregon.^[5]

The game that would be later named The Oregon Trail debuted to Rawitsch's class on December 3, 1971. Although the minicomputer's teletype and paper tape terminals that predate display screens were awkward to children, the game was immediately popular, and he made it available to users of the minicomputer time-sharing network owned by Minneapolis Public Schools. When the next semester ended, Rawitsch printed out a copy of the source code and deleted it from the minicomputer.^[5][4]

The game was popular among American elementary school students from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, as many computers came bundled with the game. MECC followed up on the success of The Oregon Trail with similar titles such as The Yukon Trail and The Amazon Trail.^[20] David H. Ahl published Westward Ho!, set on the Oregon Trail in 1848, as a type-in game in 1986.^[21]

The phrase "You have died of dysentery" has been popularized on T-shirts^[4] and other promotional merchandise.

The game resurfaced in 2008 when Gameloft created an updated version for cell phones.^[22][23][4] A new release for the iPhone and iPod Touch was also available from Gameloft.^[24] The game went live in the iTunes App Store on March 11, 2009.^[25] In 2010, the Palm webOS version was released to the Palm App Catalog on January 7, and Xbox Live version was released on Windows Phone 7 on November 11.

The cell phone version of the game is similar to the original, but varies in that the player can choose one of three different wagons: a basic wagon, a prairie schooner or a Conestoga wagon. The player can also choose to become a banker, a carpenter, or a farmer, each of which has unique benefits. Unlike the computer version of the game, players in the iPhone and iPod Touch version do not need to buy guns and bullets. The game has received a major update, in which the player uses trading and crafting to upgrade their wagon, buy food, and cure ailments. ^{[citation needed]}

In 2011, the 1975 and 1978 BASIC source code versions of the game were reconstructed.^[26]

In February 2011, a new version of the game was released on the social networking site Facebook.^[27] This version was removed from Facebook when Blue Fang Games closed.^[28] A new version of the game was also released for the Wii and 3DS that year, and received a negative critical response.^[29]

In 2012, a parody called Organ Trail was released by the Men Who Wear Many Hats for browsers, iOS, and Android, with the setting changed to human survivors fleeing a zombie apocalypse.^[30]

In 2012, the Willamette Heritage Center (WHC) and the Statesman Journal newspaper in Salem, Oregon created Oregon Trail Live as a live-action event.^[31] Teams competed through ten challenges on the grounds of the WHC. Challenges were based loosely on the game: hunting for game was done by shooting Nerf guns at college students wearing wigs and cloth antlers, while carrying 200 pounds (91 kg) of meat became pulling a 200-pound man up a hill in a child's red wagon while he recited historical meat facts and pointed out choice cuts. Independence, Missouri, was at one end of the grounds, and the Willamette Valley was at the other end. The WHC received the 2014 Outstanding Educator Award from the Oregon-California Trails Association for this event.

In 2014, a parody musical called The Trail to Oregon! was made by the musical theater company StarKid Productions, with several references being made towards the game.^[32]

In 2015, a 5k fun run held in Oregon City (the end of the route of the Oregon Trail) was modeled after the game with choice points along the route.^[33]

Also that year, Pressman Toy Corporation released The Oregon Trail card game based on the video game.^[34]

In 2018, a handheld electronic version of the game was produced by the company Basic Fun. This battery-powered version featured a small TV monitor that replicated the look and sounds of one of the older PC/Apple versions of the game.