If you were lucky enough to come of age in the 1980s and 1990s, The Oregon Trail was likely your first introduction to computers, to the nearly impossible task of hunting squirrels, and to the very real dangers of fording a river. It also may have been your first exposure to the Willamette Valley, that little piece of verdant paradise your wagon traveled 2,000 miles to reach. So what is it that led hundreds of thousands of settlers—and countless elementary school students—to brave dysentery, typhoid, and meager rations to reach a valley at the foot of the Cascades?