Welcome to Barbara Burgess' Web site

Barbara is recently retired as assistant professor of journalism at Washburn University in Topeka and Director of the Center for Kansas Studies. She is a scholar of the Oregon Trail. She has a BA in English from Colorado College (Colorado Springs), a MS in journalism from Kansas State University, and a doctorate in American Studies from the University of Kansas. Both her masters degree thesis and her doctoral dissertation are studies of the journals written by women on the overland trail. (Dissertation: Migrant Women to Oregon, 1836 - 1860)

She became an Oregon Trail watcher about 20 years ago after she discovered the trail ruts of a branch of the Oregon Trail in the family’s pasture northwest of Wamego. Her trail activities have included tracing and mapping the trail across Pottawatomie County, preserving historic sites and trail ruts, organizing car caravans to follow the trail, lobbying the Kansas legislature in support of legislation to mark the trail across Kansas and to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Oregon migration, writing newspaper and magazine articles about the trail, presenting speeches about the trail and overland migration, exploring the 189 miles of the trail in Kansas, and studying the journals written by travelers on the trail.

Barbara, her husband Denny, and their sons have traced the trail from Independence to Oregon City.

email me: barb@barbburgess.com