Over the years, other wagon trains used Westport, Leavenworth and St. Joseph as jumping-off points. The Applegate train used Independence, pre-eminent since 1827 as an outfitting center. Since the majority of emigrants were farmers with families, they often chose Murphy farm wagons as their chief means of transport. Conestoga wagons, which weighed 1 1/2 tons empty, were too heavy for travel where there were no roads. The heavier the wagon, the more likely it would bog down in mud or cause the team to break down. Oregon-bound travelers were advised to keep their wagons weighing less than 11Ž2 tons fully loaded. A new wagon and spare parts, which were almost always needed, would cost a family close to $100.

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The wagons had 10-by-3 1/2-foot bodies, and their covers were made of canvas or a waterproofed sheeting called osnaburg. Frames of hickory bows supported the cloth tops, which protected pioneers from rain and sun. The rear wheels were 5 or 6 feet in diameter, but the front wheels were 4 feet or less so that they would not jam against the wagon body on sharp turns. Metal parts were kept to a minimum because of the weight, but the tires were made of iron to hold the wheels together and to protect the wooden rims. The rims and spokes would still sometimes crack and split, of course, and in the dry air of the Great Plains, they were also likely to shrink, which eventually caused the iron tires to slip off.

These early American mobile homes were called 'prairie schooners' because they resembled a fleet of ships sailing across a sea of grass. In fact, when rivers were too deep to be forded and there was no timber to build rafts, the travelers would remove the wheels and float the wagons across.

Once he had selected a wagon or two, the pioneer next had to decide on his draft animals. Most emigrants, including Captain Burnett, swore by oxen. 'The ox is the most noble animal, patient, thrifty, durable, and gentle,' he said. 'Unfortunately, they also had their drawbacks. Their cloven hoofs tended to splinter on mountain rocks, and oxen could only do about 15 miles a day, while mules did 20. 'They don't walk,' said one exasperated emigrant. 'They plod.'

Prosperous families usually took two or more wagons because the typical wagon did not have a large carrying capacity. After flour sacks, food, furniture, clothes and farm equipment were piled on, not much space remained. Space was so limited that, except in terrible weather, most travelers cooked, ate and slept outside. A.J. McCall wrote of his fellow travelers, 'They laid in an over-supply of bacon, flour and beans, and in addition thereto every conceivable jimcrack and useless article that the wildest fancy could devise or human ingenuity could invent–pins and needles, brooms and brushes, ox shoes and horse shoes, lasts and leather, glass beads and hawk-bells, jumping jacks and jews-harps, rings and bracelets, pocket mirrors and pocket books, calico vests and boiled shirts.' A passerby was reminded of birds building a nest while watching one family load its wagon. The members of the Applegate train often killed buffalo and antelope, but a more dependable supply of meat was the herd of cattle led behind the wagons.

Once the wagons were loaded, the animals gathered and the emigrants reasonably organized, Captain Peter Burnett finally gave the signal for the Applegates and the others to move out. The train included nearly 1,000 persons of both sexes, more than 200 wagons, 700 oxen and nearly 800 loose cattle. The Great Emigration of 1843 had begun. 'The migration of a large body of men, women and children across the continent to Oregon was, in the year 1843, strictly an experiment,' Jesse Applegate, the leader of the cow column, wrote.

Out on the plains in the middle of May, the grass was luxuriant and the wildflowers out in force. The spring storms were often startling in their power. The thunderstorms of eastern Kansas, wrote one traveler, 'rolled the whole circle of the firmament with a peculiar and awful vibration.' Another diarist reported a gale that covered the ground with a foot of water, drove rain through the wagon covers 'like as though they had been paper,' and scattered cattle 'to the ends of the earth.'

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