The California Trail was an emigrant trail of about across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of 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 trail has several splits and cutoffs for alternative routes around major landforms and to different destinations, with a combined length of over .
Introduction By 1847, two former fur trading frontier forts marked trailheads for major alternative routes through Utah and Wyoming to Northern California. The first was Jim Bridger's Fort Bridger (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. From Salt Lake the Salt Lake Cutoff (est. 1848) went north and west of the Great Salt Lake and rejoined the California Trail in the City of Rocks in present-day Idaho.
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). 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. 1836) on the Snake River in present-day Idaho. From Fort Hall the Oregon and California trails went about southwest along the Snake River Valley to another "parting of the ways" trail junction at the junction of the Raft and Snake rivers. The California Trail from the junction followed the Raft River to the City of Rocks in Idaho near the present Nevada-Idaho-Utah tripoint. The Salt Lake and Fort Hall routes were about the same length: about .
From the City of Rocks the trail went into the present state of Utah following the South Fork of Junction Creek. 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. 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. The water turned increasingly alkaline as they progressed down the Humboldt, and there were almost no trees. "Firewood" usually consisted of broken brush, and the grass was sparse and dried out. Few travelers liked the Humboldt River Valley passage.
At 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.Humboldt and Central Route NPS write up Accessed July 30, 2012
An alternative route across the present states of Utah and Nevada that bypassed both Fort Hall and the Humboldt River trails was developed in 1859. This route, the Central Overland Route, which was about shorter and more than 10 days quicker, went south of the Great Salt Lake and across the middle of present-day Utah and Nevada through a series of springs and small streams. The route went south from Salt Lake City across the Jordan River to Fairfield, Utah, then west-southwest past Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, Callao, Utah, Ibapah, Utah, to Ely, Nevada, then across Nevada to Carson City, Nevada. (Today's U.S. Route 50 in Nevada roughly follows this route.) (See: Pony Express MapPony Express Map , Bureau of Land Management; accessed July 27, 2012) In addition to immigrants and migrants from the East, after 1859 the Pony Express, Overland stages and the First Transcontinental Telegraph (1861) all followed this route with minor deviations.
Once in Western Nevada and Eastern California, the pioneers worked out several paths over the rugged Carson Range and Sierra Nevada into the gold fields, settlements and cities of northern California. The main routes initially (1846–1848) were the Truckee Trail to the Sacramento Valley and after about 1849 the Carson Trail route to the American River and the Placerville, California gold digging region.
Starting about 1859, the Johnson Cutoff (Placerville Route, est. 1850–1851) and the Henness Pass Route (est. 1853) across the Sierra were greatly improved and developed. These main roads across the Sierra were both toll roads so there were funds to pay for maintenance and upkeep on the roads. These toll roads were also used to carry cargo west to east from California to Nevada, as thousands of tons of supplies were needed by the gold and silver miners, etc. working on the Comstock Lode (1859–1888) near the present Virginia City, Nevada. The Johnson Cutoff, from Placerville to Carson City along today's U.S. Route 50 in California, was used by the Pony Express (1860–61) year-round and in the summer by the stage lines (1860–1869). It was the only overland route from the East to California that could be kept partially open for at least horse traffic in the winter.
The California Trail was heavily used from 1845 until several years after the end of the American Civil War; in 1869 several rugged wagon routes were established across the Carson Range and Sierra Nevada to different parts of northern California. After about 1848 the most popular route was the Carson Route which, while rugged, was still easier than most others and entered California in the middle of the gold fields. The trail was heavily used in the summers until the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads. Trail traffic rapidly fell off as the cross-country trip was much quicker and easier by train—about seven days. The economy class fare across the western United States of about $69 was affordable by most California-bound travelers.
The trail was used by about 2,700 settlers from 1846 up to 1849. These settlers were instrumental in helping convert California to a U.S. possession. Volunteer members of John C. Frémont's California Battalion assisted the Pacific Squadron's sailors and marines in 1846 and 1847 in conquering California in the Mexican–American War. After the discovery of gold in January 1848, word spread about the California Gold Rush. Starting in late 1848 until 1869, more than 250,000 businessmen, farmers, pioneers and miners passed over the California Trail to California. The traffic was so heavy that in two years the new settlers added so many people to California that by 1850 it qualified for admission as the 31st state with 120,000 residents."Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1945"; Accessed April 14, 2011 The Trail travelers were added to those migrants going by wagon from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, California, in winter, the travelers down the Gila River trail in Arizona, and those traveling by sea routes around Cape Horn and the Strait of Magellan, or by sea and then across the Isthmus of Panama, Nicaragua, or Mexico, and then by sea to California. Roughly half of California's new settlers came by trail and the other half by sea.
The original route had many branches and cutoffs, encompassing about in total. About of the rutted traces of these trails remain in Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and California as historical evidence of the great mass migration westward. Portions of the trail are now preserved by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the National Park Service (NPS) as the California National Historic Trail and marked by BLM, NPS and the many state organizations of the Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA).Oregon-California Trail Association Maps put out by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) show the network of rivers followed to get to California.
Establishment (1811–1840) The beginnings of the California and Oregon Trails were laid out by mountain men and fur traders from about 1811 to 1840 and were only passable initially on foot or by horseback. South Pass, the easiest pass over the U.S. continental divide of the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean drainages, was discovered by Robert Stuart and his party of seven in 1812 while he was taking a message from the west to the east back to John Jacob Astor about the need for a new ship to supply Fort Astoria on the Columbia River—their supply ship Tonquin had blown up. In 1824, fur trappers Jedediah Smith and Thomas Fitzpatrick rediscovered the South Pass as well as the Sweetwater, North Platte and Platte River Valleys connecting to the Missouri River.
British fur traders primarily used the Columbia and Snake rivers to take their supplies to their trading posts. After 1824, U.S. fur traders had discovered and developed first pack and then wagon trails along the Platte, North Platte, Sweetwater and Big Sandy River (Wyoming) to the Green River (Colorado River) where they often held their annual Rocky Mountain Rendezvous (1827–1840) held by a fur trading company at which U.S. trappers, mountain men and Indians sold and traded their furs and hides and replenished their supplies they had used up in the previous year.
A rendezvous typically only lasted a few weeks and was known to be a lively, joyous place, where nearly all were allowed—free trappers, Native Americans, native trapper wives and children, travelers, and later on, even tourists who would venture from even as far as Europe to observe the games and festivities. Trapper Jim Beckwourth describes: "Mirth, songs, dancing, shouting, trading, running, jumping, singing, racing, target-shooting, yarns, frolic, with all sorts of drinking and gambling extravagances that white men or Indians could invent."Gowans, Fred R.; Rocky Mountain Rendezvous: A History of The Fur Trade 1825–1840; Gibbs Smith (March 2, 2005); Initially from about 1825 to 1834 the fur traders used pack trains to carry their supplies in and the traded furs out.
Beginnings Sections of what became the California Trail route were discovered and developed by American fur traders including Kit Carson, Joseph R. Walker, and Jedediah Smith, who often worked with the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and after 1834 by the American Fur Company and explored widely in the west. Canadian Hudson's Bay Company trappers led by Peter Skene Ogden and others scouted the Humboldt River off and on from about 1830 to 1840—little of their explorations was known. A few U.S. and British fur trappers and traders had explored what is now called the Humboldt River (named Mary's River by Ogden) that crosses most of the present state of Nevada and provides a natural corridor to western Nevada and eastern California.
The Humboldt River was of little interest to the trappers as it was hard to get to, dead ended in an alkali sink, and had few beavers. The details of the Humboldt River and how to get to it was known to only a few trappers. When trapping largely ceased in the 1840s due to a change in men's hat style that didn't use the felt from beaver's fur there was a number of out of work fur trappers and traders who were familiar with many of the Indians, trails, and rivers in the west.
In 1832, Captain Benjamin Bonneville, a United States Military Academy graduate on temporary leave, followed the fur traders paths along the valleys of the Platte, North Platte and Sweetwater Rivers to South Pass (Wyoming) with a fur trader's caravan of 110 men and 20 wagons over and on to the Green River—the first wagons over South Pass.