The most famous of the overland emigrant routes to the Pacific, the Oregon Trail extended over 2,000 miles from Independence, Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River. Mountain men blazed the Trail in the 1830s but it was not until the 1840s, after returning trappers, traders, surveyors and missionaries had kindled Oregon fever, that the first wagon trains successfully traversed the route. Consisting of canvas-topped “prairie schooners” drawn by horses or oxen, the wagon trains adopted a semi-military organization with elected leaders to enforce discipline and maximize protection. Thus at night, to protect against the danger of Indian attack (which was actually rate), and to prevent animals from straying, the wagons would be drawn up in a tight circular stockade or corral, guarded by sentinels. In 1843, approximately 900 emigrants traveled the Oregon Trail. Their numbers swelled in the years thereafter: an estimated 1,500 in 1844; 2,500 in 1845; and 4,000 in 1847. After the discovery of gold in California in 1848, more than 25,000 took to the Oregon Trail, most branching off at South Pass for California. In 1850, approximately 50,000 traveled the Oregon and its subsidiary trails to California; 60,000 during the peak year of 1852. The Oregon Trail remained a popular overland route until the 1870s when it was superceded by the railroads.

A unique breed of tough, self-reliant loners, the trappers and pioneers who called themselves “mountain men” became in the 1820s and 1830s the trail blazers of the Far West. Chafing at the restraints of settled society and attracted by the West’s profusion of wildlife, they went in search of beaver pelts and other furs, some as members of the fur companies but many independently. They learned Indian languages and customs, often married Indian women, and generally came to resemble Native Americans in dress, eating habits and fighting methods. Spending most of their time in the wild, mountain men gathered each summer at a prearranged spot for the annual rendezvous. There, joined by traders, fur company representatives, and Indians, they traded, drank, gambled and caroused in a raucous celebration.

Several mountain men won fame as explorers. Thus James Bridger (1804-1881) became the first white to visit the Great Salt Lake (1824); Jedediah S. Smith (1798-1831) rediscovered the South Pass (1823-1824), and later led a party through the Great Basin and Mojave Desert into California (1826); Kit Carson (1809-1868) blazed trails in the province of New Mexico (1826-1831); and Joseph Reddeford Walker journeyed from the Rockies to the Pacific, camping near Yosemite Valley in 1833.