Page "Meek Cutoff" Paragraph 8

Some of the emigrants were not doing well, especially those who were already sick when the train took the cutoff.

Just west of Castle Rock and along the North Fork of the Malheur River, a young mother of two small children was losing the battle to stay alive.

“ Rowland Chambers ’ wife Sarah, the Captain ’ s daughter, had contracted camp fever earlier in the journey and was now critical.

Everything possible was done to ease her distress as she lay in the wagon hovering between life and death but alas, to no avail.

Sarah breathed her last breath at this camp and was laid to rest beneath the sagebrush .” The next day the grieving husband was left behind with a horse as the train continued to journey on.

He went down to the river and found a native stone that he smoothed, then he carved this inscription: “ Mrs. S Chambers, Sep 3rd 1845 .” It remains one of the few Oregon Trail gravestones in existence.