Farmers – stories had spread about the fertile land of California.Fur trappers – these mountain men had been in the hills for years, and some served as guides.But the discovery of gold would lead to a flood of western migration.

Who were the people who traveled the California Trail? In the beginning, most of the emigrants were farmers, hoping to improve their families fortunes in the fertile soil of the western United States. When the transcontinental railroad opened in 1869, the trail fell out of use completely. Those numbers eclipsed all the previous years combined! However, word quickly spread about the difficulty of navigating the trail and eventually, the numbers dwindled. The Search for Goldīetween the discovery of gold in 18, an estimated 75,000 people traveled the California Trail in search of their fortunes. Dangers such as disease, skirmishes with Native Americans awaited those who were brave enough to take the long journey. Historians place it close to 2,000 miles. There is no exact way to tell how long the California Trail was because each starting point was different. One such cutoff led to the tragic events of the infamous Donner party. Eventually, the California Trail split off from the Oregon Trail and headed south to the numerous paths and “shortcuts” over the Sierra Nevada mountains and into California. Starting points varied, but most began somewhere along the Missouri River and ran parallel with the Oregon Trail, heading west. So, where is the California Trail? And where did the California Trail start? Open from 1841 to 1869, the California Trail brought emigrants from many locations in the East. If you’ve never visited us at the California Trail Interpretive Center in Elko, you might be asking yourself, “What is the California Trail?” Many people have heard of the Oregon Trail, but the California Trail also spanned across the western United States and brought travelers face-to-face with their destinies – some ending in good fortune, and others ending in tragedy.

California trail map