The Oregon Trail is a computer game developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974. The game was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail.

In the game, players assume the role of a wagon leader guiding a party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Players make decisions about when and where to rest, when to ford rivers, how much food and supplies to carry, and when to take on new members. The game …