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Spirits of the Oregon Trail
James Tompkins, Ph.D.

The Patrice Press publishes primarily books and maps, not plays. But when we caught the synopsis of this work we simply couldn’t resist, for several reasons. First, the play itself.

It is set in Pekin, Illinois, a few miles south of Peoria. Harold Holden, an electrical engineer, has accepted a transfer to Oregon and has to convince his family it’s a good idea to move. His wife, Susan, is already interested in history; daughter Jenny, 17, is a popular high school junior; and son Nathan, 14, is a middle-schooler who’s hooked on video games.

They decide to drive to Oregon so they can follow the old Oregon Trail. At the Northwoods Mall in Peoria, where they are shopping for clothes for the journey, Jenny wanders into the food court. So does another girl—a very strange looking girl.

"Why are you dressed so funny?" Jenny asks.

"I’m not dressed funny. This is the way my friends and I always dress."

"I don’t see anyone else dressed like you. Who are you anyway?

"My maiden name was Abigail Jane Scott, but my name was Abigail Scott Duniway, after I married in ‘53"

The new girl is talking 1853—she is the ghost, or spirit, of the famous suffragist who lived near Springfield, Ill., in 1852, when her parents decided to emigrant to Oregon.

All the way to the West the kids are accompanied by a dozen "spirits" of real youngsters who followed the Oregon Trail in its heyday. Every one of them left diaries and read from their writings.

Staging directions are given, but the play can also be presented as readers’ theater without sets and without the need to memorize lines.

The sixty-page play, which has a full-color cover, retails for $4.95, plus the usual $3.95 shipping. The copyright restricts photocopying, as is customary in such publications. However, the play is offered for school use at $65 for a banded set of fifteen copies.

Jim Tompkins, the playwright, is a skilled educator, having taught for many years. He lectures throughout Oregon, travels the Oregon Trail frequently, and has provided scripts for much of the interpretation at the End of the Trail Interpretive Center in Oregon City. He’s a historian and also a dad—of kids who are about the same age of his fictional travelers.