Arrival in the Puget Sound Area

New York Public Library

Phoebe Goodell Judson made the journey on the Oregon Trail in the spring of 1853, at the age of twenty. She came west with her husband of three years, Holden Allen Judson and their two-year old daughter Annie. A boy that they would call La Bonta for the creek near his birthplace, a minor stop on this dangerous trip, would be born on the way. Many others had traveled this trail before them, when the California Gold Rush in 1849 instigated a rush westward, but the Judsons had their sights on a more northerly goal, the Oregon Territory. By the time they reached their intended destination of Grand Mound [link to map], just south of Olympia, where Mrs. Judson’s parents had claimed their land, Washington was its own territory.

In her memoirs, A Pioneer’s Search for an Ideal Home, written in her eighties, Mrs. Judson describes her first view of her new home:
“ It was one of Washington’s loveliest October days, brightened by the snow-capped peaks of the mountains glistening in the morning sunshine; the gorgeous hues of the maple foliage on the lowlands, with a background of the ever green fir and cedar, presenting a landscape that could hardly be surpassed for grandeur, or more refreshing to the souls of weary emigrants.”

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