California Trail National Historic Trail / Missouri / Kansas / Nebraska / Wyoming / Utah / Idaho / Nevada / Oregon / California National Park Service Official Map & Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management Department of the Interior Guide - Large Print Forest Service Department of Agriculture Formatted for ADA standards at 11” x 17” print size. Paradise “Ho for California!” Free to the Pacific in 1805, land. Gold. Adventure. fur traders followed Between 1841 and 1869, Indian trails up western more than a quarter river valleys and across million people answered mountain passes, filling this call and crossed the in the blank spaces plains and mountains to on early maps that the “El Dorado” of the represented unknown West. By 1849 the lure country. By the late of instant wealth and 1830s, mountain men tales of gold beckoned had explored most of at the end of the 2,000­ the routes that became mile California Trail. overland trails. In 1837 The story of the men, an economic panic swept women, and children the United States and who traveled overland gave people already to the West Coast has itching to move an become an American additional reason to go epic. Since the late 1700s, west. Throughout the the West had held out 1840s promoters and trail the promise of boundless guides worked hard to opportunity. After Lewis create an idyllic picture of and Clark found a way the prospects for greater Rev. 11/29/12 fortune and better health ideal climate and flowers open to Americans who that bloomed all winter made the journey to “made me just crazy to California. One young move out there, for I emigrant reported that thought such a country a pamphlet describing a must be a paradise.” lush California with its Manifest Destiny [caption] [photo caption] The concept of Manifest Destiny—that it African American trapper Jim Beckwourth was God’s will and the right of Americans to guided wagon trains and blazed a trail across expand west—is symbolized in John Gast’s the Sierra Nevada in 1851. Colorado Historical painting, American Progress, 1872. Society atching “one continual stream” overlanders to head west. Wof “honest looking open harted Personal motives of the emigrants varied. people” going west in 1846, mountain Some planned to build permanent homes man James Clyman asked why “so many or farms, but many hoped to make their of all kinds and classes of People should fortunes and return east. One 1846 sell out comfortable homes in Missouri traveler noted that his companions all and Elsewhere pack up and start across “agreed in the one general object, that of such an emmence Barren waste to settle bettering their condition,” but individual in some new Place of which they have at hopes and dreams “were as various as most so uncertain information.” Clyman’s can well be imagined.” Dreams spurred answer?—“this is the character of my a diversity of emigrants too: Americans, countrymen.” African Americans, Indians, Canadians, Europeans—people of all ages and What was the character of Americans backgrounds crossed the plains. in the 1840s? Many embraced Manifest Destiny, a phrase penned by journalist Why Go West? [caption] John O’Sullivan in July 1845 to explain the Posters such as this captured El Dorado’s U.S. government’s thirst for expansion. It promise of instant wealth. The call of was a new term but not a new idea. Since California was irresistible—health, cheap and fertile land, and a paradise without cyclones the beginning of the republic, leaders had or blizzards. (Poster, California Cornucopia of aggressively claimed land for the United the World, 1883 poster, advertises 43,795,000 States. Manifest Destiny crystallized the Acres of Government Lands) Huntington idea that it was God’s will and the rightful Library destiny of Americans to take over the continent. It became a rallying cry for he Bidwell-Bartleson party, the first Great Basin. The next summer promoter Temigrants to go to California, left Lansford W. Hastings convinced about Missouri in May 1841 with 69 people. At 80 wagons of late-starting emigrants to Soda Springs, Idaho, some continued on try this new cutoff across the Great Salt to Oregon. The others, knowing only “that Lake Desert. The last of them was the ill- California lay to the west,” struggled across fated Donner-Reed party. In 1846 a party the north end of the Great Salt Lake Desert. from the Willamette Valley opened a They abandoned their wagons before southern route to Oregon, now known as reaching the Humboldt River, packed the Applegate Trail. Peter Lassen branched their livestock with necessities, and, in south from this route in 1848 to reach his November, 39 travelers reached California. ranch in northern California. Not all early In 1844 the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy traffic on the California Trail headed west. party, traveling the Truckee route, reached After marching across the Southwest during the Sierra Nevada in November. Stalled the war with Mexico, Mormon Battalion by snow, they left some wagons at Donner veterans left Sutter’s Fort in 1848 for the Lake and packed onward. In the spring Valley of the Great Salt Lake. They opened a they retrieved their wagons, becoming the wagon road over Carson Pass, south of Lake first emigrants to take wagons all the way Tahoe, that became the preferred route for to Sutter’s Fort, California. In 1845 John C. wagon travel during the gold rush. Fremont explored a new route across the Beginnings [caption] [caption] John Bidwell was 21 when he caught “If we never see each other again, do the best California fever. His 1841 party of men, you can, God will take care of us.” Patty Reed women, and children was the first of any size to travel overland to the far West. Library of Congress [photo caption] Delayed by mishaps, the Donner-Reed [photo caption] party didn’t reach the Sierra Nevada until Rescuers, intent on saving the children first, November. Trapped in deep snow, they stayed separated eight-year-old Patty Reed from her in makeshift shelters near Donner Lake mother. (Patty is shown here as a teen.) (above). Nearly half the party died of cold and California Dept. of Parks and Recreation starvation. ames W. Marshall discovered gold adventure. Married men left families and Jon January 24, 1848, at John Sutter’s jobs, hoping to return home in a year or sawmill on the South Fork of the American so with enough money to last a lifetime. River, about 40 miles east of Sutter’s Fort. Thousands of travelers clogged the trail Fortune hunters from California, Oregon, to California. The size of the rush created and Sonora, Mexico, flooded the goldfields a host of problems. Almost every blade by June, but the news spread more slowly of grass vanished before the enormous across the continent. In December 1848 trail herds. Overcrowded campsites President James Polk confirmed the and unsanitary conditions contributed discovery in a report to Congress, thus to the spread of cholera. Desperation setting the stage for the largest voluntary created tension as Indians saw the plants migration in American history. By the and animals they depended on for food spring of 1849 gold fever was an epidemic. disappear. Single men headed west to find wealth and The gold rush added new trails to and the Southwest. Cherokee Indians California. Mountain man Jim Beckwourth from Arkansas and present-day Oklahoma and surveyor William Nobles opened routes opened a route through the Rockies, the across the Sierra Nevada, while thousands first that did not use South Pass. traveled to the goldfields across Mexico Gold Rush [photo captions] [photo caption] Pick axe and pan artifacts, Museum of the In 1852 miners at Spanish Flat, El Dorado Rockies and Miners Creed, Bancroft Library County, (above) pose by their “long tom”—a device for separating gold from rock and [photo caption] gravel. California State Library The gold nugget (above left) that James Marshall found at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 is [photo caption] about the size of a dime and weighs just over Miner panning for gold, Natural History a quarter of an ounce. Smithsonian/National Museum of Los Angeles County Numismatic Collection he California Trail eventually offered the Raft River area, where the main branch Tmany ways to get to the West Coast. of the California Trail separated from the The network of cutoffs and variants became Oregon Trail; or to Utah and the settlements what is often described as a rope with of the Latter-day Saints, Mormons, which frayed ends. Most emigrants set out from were popular way stations. After visiting Salt towns on the Missouri River and followed Lake City, most emigrants followed the Salt the Oregon Trail along the Platte and North Lake Cutoff back to the main trail at City Platte rivers. The trails became a single cord of Rocks in present-day Idaho. For wagons (more-or-less) between Fort Kearny and the Humboldt River Valley provided the South Pass in present-day Wyoming. At best practical wagon road through the Parting of the Ways the strands unwound basin-and-range country, but overlanders again. The western end of the rope fanned continually sought easier ways to cross the out at the Humboldt Sink into routes formidable Sierra Nevada. leading to California and the goldfields. By 1860 freight and mail companies, South Pass marked the halfway point on military expeditions, new settlements and the trail and the end of the long ascent up trading stations, and thousands of travelers the Continental Divide. West of South Pass going in both directions transformed the travelers could go several ways: to Idaho and California Trail into a road.