Unknown Oregon Trail Cholera Victims -- Vieux Cem., nr Louisville KS
N 39° 15.368 W 096° 14.795
14S E 737579 N 4348814
Unknown victims of an 1849 cholera outbreak along the Oregon Trail at the Vermillion River toll crossing are buried at Vieux Cemetery.
Waymark Code: WMGVT0
Location: Kansas, United States
Date Posted: 04/13/2013
Views: 5
The Vieux Cemetery holds the graves of several marked graves of unknown emigrants who died of cholera at the Vermillion River Oregon Trail crossing in 1849.
The emigrants on the Oregon Trail did not know what we know about sanitation. They had no idea about disease-causing bacteria, or bacterial contamination, which Louis Pasteur would discover 20 years in the future.
Water-borne fecal-bacteria illnesses were a frequent scourge of river crossings along the Oregon Trail, where cow and human feces could easily contaminate the water supply everyone relied on. One person with cholera -- even if asymptomatic -- could kill hundreds if their feces got into the water supply.
Emigrants used the various water supplies they encountered on the Trail to bathe, cook, and wash -- they heated the water, but did not always boil it, which is the only way to kill the cholera bacteria.
Without family to bury the emigrants, Louis Vieux (who operated the lucrative and very busy Vermillion River toll crossing on the Oregon Trail) gave space in his family cemetery for some to be buried. As the emigrants continued to die (90+ eventually perished in this outbreak) the burials were shifted to a cholera cemetery a few hundred yards west.
Burial Location: Louis Vieux cemetery
Available Times for Viewing: dawn to dusk daily
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Visit Instructions:
Take a picture of the headstone. A waymarker and/or GPSr is not required to be in the image.