Polston Travels The Oregon Trail A Second Time

The first time Randy Polston traveled the Oregon Trail, in 2009 with his wife Rachael, it was a learning experience that he shared afterwards with students, clubs and anyone else who was interested.
Having just returned from the Oregon Trail a second time, with family on his dad’s side, it was a teaching experience that he’s still willing to share with others.
“During my years as a principal, the Lilly Foundation offered Educator Renewal Grants for educators to pursue and follow a dream that they had,” Polston said in an interview Monday.
A self-described “history nut,” he started looking into the grants and decided to write one to see if he could pursue one of his dreams. For his first two tries, he wrote grant proposals to go east to visit Boston and learn about the Revolutionary War era. He was told that the grants - which a person could only apply for once a year - were really hard to get. He also was told he really needed to personalize the grant.
After the first two grant applications were denied, Polston changed his third effort to pursue going west to follow the Oregon Trail.
“This time, I really personalized it. Everybody kept saying do that. I wrote the grant as if I were a pioneer and this was my diary heading west. Day one, this was what I experienced. Day two - just from reading this book (“Traveling the Oregon Trail”),” he recalled.
Polston was awarded the grant in 2008, and he and Rachael made plans to begin their journey on the Oregon Trail in June 2009.
“We made it all the way out. Oregon City, Oregon, is the end of the trail,” he said. “Now, on that trip, I took over 700 pictures because there’s ruts out there that are fossilizing. You can see right where the wagons went, and it’s just one site after another that this book highlighted.”
In the grant process, Lilly Foundation asked how the grant awardee would bring the information they learned back to Indiana kids. Polston put together a travelogue and made himself available to speak to all of the fifth-grade classes at Warsaw Community Schools because they study U.S. history. He also made himself readily available to organizations like the Kosciusko County Historical Society.
Polston had shown his travelogue to family members, including his uncle and aunt, John Sr. and LeAnn Polston; and their oldest son, John Jr., and his wife, Kay. They told Polston they wanted to take the same trip and asked him to go with them if they did the same thing so he could be their guide. He told them if they could work out the timing, he’d love to do the trip again.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Having an opportunity to do it twice - for a history nut - is a dream come true, and I said, ‘Absolutely!’” Polston stated.
They tried scheduling the trip over different summers, but something kept coming up and they’d have to reschedule it. Finally, this summer they made it happen.
On Friday, June 26, Polston headed to their house in Neoga, Ill. They loaded up the RV and headed west on Saturday, June 27. They returned to Neoga at 4:38 a.m. Sunday, July 12. On the way back - both in 2009 and this year - they went through Yellowstone and saw Old Faithful, as well as Mount Rushmore and similar things.
“The first trip with Rachael I was just so excited to see these spots and visit everything that it pointed out in the book as this is a must-see stop here and here’s what happened here. So my excitement level was over the top, even to the point where I had to walk through a little field to where you could see these ruts and there were signs ‘Rattlesnake Area.’ There was nothing stopping me,” Polston said.
“On this (second) trip, I tell you, it made my heart smile because I would stand there and I would think about Rachael ... the last time she and I had a big trip like that was that summer of ’09. And seeing it with Rachael and then remembering that and bringing back those memories. And then, excited as I was to see it a second time, to see the reaction of my aunt and uncle, cousin and his wife was very, very special to me.”
Rachael died in September 2024.
John Jr. and Kay put together the agenda for the trip this year, based on “Traveling the Oregon Trail,” but Polston looked it over and made some suggestions of what to add to the itinerary.
When they saw the Wyoming ruts, which was one of the things Polston had them add to the agenda as a must-see, “I just looked at their faces and they were just in awe. That was what made it so special for me, and they just kept thanking me: ‘Thank you for being our tour guide.’ I said this makes it special for me, to see these because that was 17 years ago that I went,” he recalled.
One of the few changes Polston noticed on the second trip compared to the 2009 trip was at Scottsbluff, Neb.
“Scottsbluff was a campsite up against the mountain, and Rachael and I went out there in ’09. It blew me away because there were two or three places along this trail that the pioneers would camp and, of course, they were looking for things to buy after their chores were done and everything. What can we do now? And Scottsbluff in ’09 had all these pioneer names and the state and the year that they literally carved into the side of the mountain. That was so neat and I took a whole bunch of pictures of that in ’09. And I told my family that when I was here in ’09, they put up a fence to keep people back ... because people were scratching their names in it ... as far as I was concerned, defacing it,” Polston said.
This year when they pulled up to it, the fence was gone and more people had scratched their names onto it. Polston said they may have found three legitimate names carved into it, based on the year. He was so disappointed that when he got back into the RV, he called and left a message to the Nebraska Tourism to complain, though he never heard back from them.
“That was disappointing. But, for the most part, everything else had been unchanged,” Polston said.
Having gone on the Oregon Trail twice, he said if he took the time and did some research, he could write a book about it.
“I got a feel of that a little bit because my family, as we were approaching the next (stop), they said, ‘Tell us what you know. Tell us exactly what we’re going to be seeing.’ I love that, so I was telling them all the history of it. If there was a part of it I couldn’t remember, I grabbed my book and shared that,” Polston said.
While Polston only took about 200 or so pictures this year, John Sr. took over 1,000.
Even though Polston isn’t required to share about his Oregon Trail this time around, he said he definitely would like to. His email is rwpolston55@outlook.com
“If they want to contact me, I can come and share these stories. After 17 years, the Oregon Trail is still out there and being preserved by our government, for the most part. Not at Scottsbluff. But, yeah, I’d love to (share these stories),” he stated.
Would Polston ever make a third trip to the Oregon Trail?
“If the Lord blesses me and I continue to be as active as I am, if someone were to call me up and say, ‘Hey, we’d love to do an Oregon Trail trip. Would you go with us?’ I can’t say no to that because of my love,” Polston stated.
He said the trip this year was a blessing.
“I told my family, I thanked them again when I said goodbyes and got over here to Warsaw. I thanked them and said, ‘You know, family members were made on this trip and from start A to back home again,” Polston said. “... I told my family it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this trip. Wow, what a blessing to be given the opportunity a second time.”