By LISA BRITTON

Marilyn Goff has no doubt that the Oregon Trail was one tough trek across the United States.

andquot;I’d have been a dead pilgrim,andquot; Goff, 63, says with a laugh and a groan from her seat on the sag wagon during the Old Oregon Trail Ride held in June. andquot;I would have absolutely died on the trail.andquot;

Goff, who is an assistant professor of mass communication at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., made her own trip westward to participate in the trail ride for the third straight year.

Some modern-day pioneers on the Old Oregon Trail Ride rode in covered wagons, some rode horses and some walked the dusty road from Sumpter to Whitney.

Goff’s plan was to andquot;walk and ride.andquot;

If she grew tired (she’s quick to point out that her home is below sea level as opposed to the 5,300-foot elevation along the trail ride) all Goff had to do was wait for the sag wagon, a trailer lined with hay bales pulled behind a pickup truck.

Emigrants trudging along the Oregon Trail didn’t have that luxury because the wagons were stuffed with belongings and bounced along the rough ruts.

andquot;There were no springs in the wagon so it was easier to walk,andquot; said Pam Pettersen, who works at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center.

Goff does say, though, that her curiosity could have kept her going mile after mile.

andquot;But what keeps me going is that as a journalist I have an innate sense of curiosity I want to know what’s on the other side of the hill,andquot; she said.

Joyce Anderson, 68, lives in Carlton, Wash., and was on her second Old Oregon Trail Ride with her friend, Diane Allen, 59, of Newport, Wash.

Anderson, who was born in Enterprise and grew up in Richland, seems like the type who could have tackled the Oregon Trail trip.

Heck, she’s already done several trail rides this summer, and she thinks nothing of taking pack horses into wilderness areas in Oregon, Montana and Wyoming.

But both she and Allen shake their heads when asked their impression of the original Oregon Trail experience.

andquot;Even being out a couple days like this, your skin gets so dried out. I bet those women were haggard,andquot; Allen said.

But would a person in their 60s really have undertaken the difficult and dangerous five-month journey across the West?

andquot;Considering the life expectancy at the time of the Oregon Trail migrations was so much lower than today, a lot of people were defined as ‘old’ if they were over 50,andquot; said Sarah LeCompte, director of the Interpretive Center. andquot;And it was very rare for anybody to really retire from their occupation, so the idea or terminology for a retiree just doesn’t appear in Oregon Trail diaries.andquot;

The Whitman Mission Web site (www.nps.gov/whmi/) recounts several stories of older pioneers, among them Tabitha Brown, who packed up her family and moved to Oregon when she was 66.

She set up a home for orphans upon her arrival, and cooked and cared for 40 children. Upon her death in 1858, Brown’s home was turned into a college, which is now Pacific University.

Family prompted many older pioneers to head West if all your children and grandchildren were leaving, wouldn’t you be tempted to follow?

Author Merrill Mattes recounts the story of a pioneer named Grandma Keyes, who started across the Oregon Trail in 1846 at the age of 70.

She never saw Oregon, and was andquot;respectfully buriedandquot; at Alcove Springs.

andquot;There are a few accounts of three generation families traveling together to Oregon, but when I looked into it, the ‘senior/grandparent’ generation in those cases was frequently in their 40s or early 50s,andquot; LeCompte said. andquot;The Grandma Keyes story is a well-known account associated with the Donner-Murphy-Reed wagon party where Sarah Keyes, age seventy, insisted in traveling with her family although she was in poor health.andquot;

Stories stir up in new book

Stories of those hardy older souls who set out across the Oregon Trail do make good tales.

LeCompte said a new book by Ron Lansing recounts the life of a man named Nimrod O’Kelly who traveled across the Oregon Trail in 1845 at age 65.

O’Kelly claimed land in the Willamette Valley in anticipation of the arrival of his family.

Unfortunately, his relatives never showed up, and in 1852 O’Kelly shot and killed a man in the midst of an argument over his claim.

In the book, Lansing writes: andquot;Old age in Nimrod’s times and on the frontier was a wonder. To some extent it accounts for why so many people came to his aid. At most, only one out of every forty Oregonians was above the age of forty-five. Less than one out of a hundred was sixty-five or more. A septugenarian or octogenarian on that early frontier was a rarity.andquot;

Lansing will present O’Kelly’s story at noon on Wednesday, July 12, at the Interpretive Center.

CALL: For more information about programs at the Interpretive Center at 523-1843.