The Oregon Trail was a 2,170-mile (3,490 km) east-west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the current states of Idaho and Oregon.
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions:
Fort Hall was a fort that was built in 1834 as a fur trading post by Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth. It was located on the Snake River in the eastern Oregon Country, now part of present-day Bannock County in southeastern Idaho, United States. Mr. Wyeth was an inventor and businessman from Boston, Massachusetts, who also founded a post at Fort William, in present-day Portland, Oregon, as part of a plan for a new trading and fisheries company. Unable to compete with the powerful British Hudson's Bay Company, based at Fort Vancouver, in 1837 Wyeth sold both posts to it. Great Britain and the United States both operated in the Oregon Country in these years.
Butterfield Overland Mail was a stagecoach service in the United States operating from 1858 to 1861. It carried passengers and U.S. Mail from two eastern termini, Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, to San Francisco, California. The routes from each eastern terminus met at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and then continued through Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Mexico, and California ending in San Francisco. On March 3, 1857, Congress authorized the U.S. postmaster general, at that time Aaron V. Brown, to contract for delivery of the U.S. mail from St. Louis to San Francisco. Prior to this, U.S. Mail bound for the Far West had been delivered by the San Antonio and San Diego Mail Line since June 1857.
Fort Laramie was a significant 19th-century trading post, diplomatic site, and military installation located at the confluence of the Laramie and the North Platte rivers. They joined in the upper Platte River Valley in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Wyoming. The fort was founded as a private trading post in the 1830s to service the overland fur trade; in 1849, it was purchased by the United States Army. It was located east of the long climb leading to the best and lowest crossing point of the Rocky Mountains at South Pass and became a popular stopping point for migrants on the Oregon Trail. Along with Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River, the trading post and its supporting industries and businesses were the most significant economic hub of commerce in the region.
The Ruby Mountains are a mountain range, primarily located within Elko County with a small extension into White Pine County, in Nevada, United States. Most of the range is included within the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. The range reaches a maximum elevation of 11,387 feet (3,471 m) on the summit of Ruby Dome. To the north is Secret Pass and the East Humboldt Range, and from there the Rubies run south-southwest for about 80 miles (130 km). To the east lies Ruby Valley, and to the west lie Huntington and Lamoille Valleys. The Ruby Mountains are the only range of an introduced bird, the Himalayan snowcock, in North America.
Lamoille is a rural census-designated place in Elko County in the northeastern section of the state of Nevada in the western United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 105. It is located 19 miles (31 km) southeast of Elko at the base of the Ruby Mountains at an elevation of 5,889 feet (1,795 m) and is part of the Elko Micropolitan Statistical Area.
The North Fork Cache la Poudre River is a tributary of the Cache la Poudre River, approximately 59.2 miles (95.3 km) long, in north central Colorado in the United States. It drains a mountainous area of north central Larimer County northwest of Fort Collins on the western side of the Laramie Foothills.
The Hastings Cutoff was an alternative route for westward emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings in The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California. The ill-fated Donner Party infamously took that route.
King Peak is the southernmost summit above 11,000 feet (3,400 m) in the Ruby Mountains of Elko County, in northeastern Nevada in the western United States. To the west is Rattlesnake Canyon, and to the east is Overland Creek Canyon, which drains into the Ruby Valley). The Ruby Crest National Recreation Trail passes just to the east on its way north from Overland Lake. The summit is located at about 29 miles (47 km) southeast of the community of Elko, in the Humboldt National Forest and the Ruby Mountains Wilderness.
Ruby Valley is a large basin located in south-central Elko and northern White Pine counties in the northeastern section of the state of Nevada in the western United States. From Secret Pass it runs south-southwest for approximately 60 miles (96 km) to Overland Pass. To the west is the steep escarpment of the Ruby Mountains, and to the north is the East Humboldt Range and Clover Valley. The east side of the valley is less well defined, but its maximum width is about 10 miles (16 km) near Franklin Lake. At its south end lies the Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
Fort Cass, established in 1835, was an important site during the Cherokee removal from the Southeast, an extended forced removal known as the Trail of Tears for their overland journey to Indian Territory. Located on the Hiwassee River in present-day Charleston, Tennessee, Fort Cass housed a garrison of United States troops who watched over the largest concentration of internment camps where Cherokee were kept during the summer of 1838 before starting the main trek west to Indian Territory. The camps stretched for many miles through the valley south of Fort Cass toward present-day Cleveland, Tennessee.
The Central Overland Route was a transportation route from Salt Lake City, Utah south of the Great Salt Lake through the mountains of central Nevada to Carson City, Nevada. For a decade after 1859, until the first Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, it served a vital role in the transport of emigrants, mail, freight, and passengers between California, Nevada, and Utah.
Oregon pioneer history (1806–1890) is the period in the history of Oregon Country and Oregon Territory, in the present day state of Oregon and Northwestern United States.
Fort Ruby, also known as Camp Ruby, was built in 1862 by the United States Army, during the American Civil War, in the "wilderness of eastern Nevada." It protected the overland mail coaches and Pony Express, in order to maintain links and communication between residents of California and the Union. It was operated 1862 to 1869, in territory dominated by bands of the Western Shoshone. The fort was located at the east entrance to the Overland Pass from Ruby Valley, near Hobson on the west side of Ruby Lake.
Nevada's entry into statehood in the United States on October 31, 1864, in the midst of the American Civil War, was expedited by Union sympathizers in order to ensure the state's participation in the 1864 presidential election in support of President Abraham Lincoln. Thus Nevada became one of only two states admitted to the Union during the war and earned the nickname that appears on the Nevada state flag today: "Battle Born".
The Overland Trail was a stagecoach and wagon trail in the American West during the 19th century. While portions of the route had been used by explorers and trappers since the 1820s, the Overland Trail was most heavily used in the 1860s as a route alternative to the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails through central Wyoming. The Overland Trail was famously used by the Overland Stage Company owned by Ben Holladay to run mail and passengers to Salt Lake City, Utah, via stagecoaches in the early 1860s. Starting from Atchison, Kansas, the trail descended into Colorado before looping back up to southern Wyoming and rejoining the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger. The stage line operated until 1869 when the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad eliminated the need for mail service via Thais' stagecoach.
In the American Old West, overland trails were built by pioneers and immigrants throughout the 19th century and especially between 1829 and 1870 as an alternative to sea and railroad transport. These immigrants began to help colonize much of North America west of the Great Plains as part of the mass overland migrations of the mid-19th century. Settlers emigrating from the eastern United States were spurred by various motives, among them religious persecution and economic incentives, to move to destinations in the far west via routes including the Oregon Trail, California Trail, and Mormon Trail. After the end of the Mexican–American War in 1849, vast new American conquests again enticed mass immigration. Legislation like the Donation Land Claim Act and significant events like the California Gold Rush further lured people to travel overland to the west.
The Hobson Site (33MS2) is a Native American archaeological site located 1.5 miles (2.4 km) below Middleport, Ohio on the north bank of the Ohio River. It has minor traces of Archaic, Woodland and Late Prehistoric artifacts. However, the largest component is a small village and cemetery of the Feurt Phase of the Fort Ancient culture originally estimated to date to 1100 to 1200 CE. More recent radiocarbon-dating has provided a date of 1350 CE.
Mud Spring, formerly called Aquaje Lodoso, is a spring and historic site in the western Antelope Valley, within northern Los Angeles County, southern California.
