With the rise of personal computers like the Apple 2, Oregon Trail wound its way to classrooms around the country with similar results. You are happy you created something people really like to do,' Dillenberger said.ĭevelopers at MECC eventually added graphics and combed pioneers’ diaries to make sure the information in the game was historically accurate. And after Rawitsch brought the code with him, with Heinemann and Dillenberger's blessing, to the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) a couple of years later, the game became part of an educational software bundle sold to schools across the state.

Oregon Trail quickly became the most popular program on the Minneapolis Public Schools computer network. 'When we got it up and running, there were kids in line from early in the morning to during their free time during the day to well after school,' Heinemann said. On December 3, 1971, Oregon Trail debuted in Rawitsch's class and was an instant hit. 'It was just a piece of history that becomes a little more real.' 'It's trying to have the student experience what it was like without having them in danger themselves,' Dillenberger said. The goal of the game was to lead a wagon train from Missouri to Oregon in the 1840s while surviving all the hazards like crossing rivers, hunting for food, and most iconically dying from dysentery, along the way.

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