Where Did the Emigrants Sleep as They Traveled the Oregon Trail?

I’ve been asked where the emigrants in wagon trains slept as they traveled the Oregon Trail. In old Western movies, families are often depicted as sleeping in their wagons, and single men as pillowed on their saddles around a campfire. In reality, where did they sleep?

Many sleeping arrangements were used. Some pioneers did sleep in their wagons. Some did camp on the ground—either in the open or sheltered under the wagon. But many used canvas tents.

This photographic detail appears to show a bed in a covered wagon

Despite the romantic depictions of the covered wagon in movies and on television, it would not have been very comfortable to travel in or sleep in the wagon. All of the family’s possessions filled the wagon box. The boxes and crates and furniture would have been hard and lumpy. While bedding was probably placed on top of the firmer and knobbliest items, sleeping on top of these items still would not have been very comfortable. A pile of quilts might have been satisfactory for one or possibly two people, but a whole family could not have slept in a wagon bed that was no more than four feet wide and ten or twelve feet long.

As one writer put it:

“By the time the necessities were packed and the prized possessions were loaded there was little room remaining. In decent weather most people cooked, ate, and slept outside. In bad weather the family slept in tents, under the wagon or inside, on the load.”

Another article states that on fair-weather nights, women slept in the wagon, while men slept underneath it.

In Lead Me Home and Forever Mine, my novels describing life on the Oregon Trail, I used a variety of sleeping arrangements—all of which I had seen written about in first-hand accounts of trail life. In Lead Me Home, the female protagonist sleeps in the wagon, while the male protagonist sleeps underneath it. But when illness strikes, they both move to a tent.

In Forever Mine, the main characters are part of a large family—a couple and their seven children. The parents, their three daughters, and youngest son sleep in one tent, while the four older boys sleep in another tent.

No matter which sleeping arrangements a wagon party used, there was not a long of privacy along the trail.

Today, there are campgrounds and parks that offer guests the opportunity to sleep in a covered wagon (see here, here, here, and here), but these are not realistic set-ups for Oregon Trail travel. Many of these establishments use the bigger Conestoga wagons or trailers based on sheepherder wagons—bigger vehicles than what the Oregon Trail pioneers had. And, of course, these wagons are outfitted for the sleeping comfort of today’s tourists with regular-size beds and bedding. They are not designed to transport one’s worldly goods across rivers and mountains.

A more true-to-life Oregon Trail sleeping experience could be obtained by pitching an old canvas Army or Boy Scout tent, using stout limbs from trees felled along the way for tent poles. And sleeping with mud under your blanket, or, at best, another piece of canvas as a tent floor.

Could you have adapted to sleeping outside for six months in all weather from early spring to late autumn?