![]() ![]() Īn alternative route across the present states of Utah and Nevada that bypassed both Fort Hall and the Humboldt River trails was developed in 1859. and there is not timber enough in three hundred miles of its desolate valley to make a snuff-box, or sufficient vegetation along its banks to shade a rabbit, while its waters contain the alkali to make soap for a nation.Īt the end of the Humboldt River, where it disappeared into the alkaline Humboldt Sink, travelers had to cross the deadly Forty Mile Desert before finding either the Truckee River or Carson River in the Carson Range and Sierra Nevada that were the last major obstacles before entering Northern California. Few travelers liked the Humboldt River Valley passage. "Firewood" usually consisted of broken brush, and the grass was sparse and dried out. The water turned increasingly alkaline as they progressed down the Humboldt, and there were almost no trees. By following the crooked, meandering Humboldt River Valley west across the arid Great Basin, emigrants were able to get the water, grass, and wood they needed for themselves and their teams. From there the trail followed along a series of small streams, such as Thousand Springs Creek in the present state of Nevada until approaching present-day Wells, Nevada, where they met the Humboldt River. The Salt Lake and Fort Hall routes were about the same length: about 190 miles (310 km).įrom the City of Rocks the trail went into the present state of Utah following the South Fork of Junction Creek. The California Trail from the junction followed the Raft River to the City of Rocks in Idaho near the present Nevada-Idaho-Utah tripoint. From Fort Hall the Oregon and California trails went about 50 miles (80 km) southwest along the Snake River Valley to another "parting of the ways" trail junction at the junction of the Raft and Snake rivers. ![]() 1836) on the Snake River in present-day Idaho. Just past present-day Soda Springs, Idaho, both trails initially turned northwest, following the Portneuf River (Idaho) valley to the British Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Hall (est. ![]() The main Oregon and California Trails crossed the Yellow River on several different ferries and trails (cutoffs) that led to or bypassed Fort Bridger and then crossed over a range of hills to the Great Basin drainage of the Bear River (Great Salt Lake). 1848) went north and west of the Great Salt Lake and rejoined the California Trail in the City of Rocks in present-day Idaho. From Salt Lake the Salt Lake Cutoff (est. 1842) in present-day Wyoming on the Green River, where the Mormon Trail turned southwest over the Wasatch Range to the newly established Salt Lake City, Utah. The first was Jim Bridger's Fort Bridger (est. The trail has several splits and cutoffs for alternative routes around major landforms and to different destinations, with a combined length of over 5,000 mi (8,000 km).īy 1847, two former fur trading frontier forts marked trailheads for major alternative routes through Utah and Wyoming to Northern California. After it was established, the first half of the California Trail followed the same corridor of networked river valley trails as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, namely the valleys of the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming. The California Trail was an emigrant trail of about 1,600 mi (2,600 km) across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of California. The California Trail led to the gold fields. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page. Please consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding subheadings. Its current readable prose size is 157 kilobytes. This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. ![]()
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