It Happened on the Oregon Trail includes twenty-nine unusual, remarkable, and little-known events that happened along the trail from Independence, Missouri to Oregon's Willamette Valley. Read about Rufus K. Porter, who developed a plan to fly people to Oregon in hot air balloons; Emily Fisher, a former slave, who ran a hotel that catered to westward travelers; about Lafayette Tate, who experieneced "trail justice" for committing murder; about Catherine Hickman and David Parks, who met on the trail and were married in a trailside wedding; and Solomon Butcher, a frontier photographer, who captured life on the Great Plains. This book reveals the hidden stories that few people know, and that are not covered in general interest books about the trail.