The Cherokee Trail was a historic overland trail through the present-day

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s of

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

, and

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

that was used from the late 1840s up through the early 1890s. The route was established in 1849 by a wagon train headed to the gold fields in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Among the members of the expedition were a group of

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

. When the train formed in Indian Territory, Lewis Evans of Evansville, Arkansas, was elected Captain. Thus, this expedition is sometimes written as the Evans/Cherokee Train."Fletcher, Dr. Jack E. and Patricia K. A. "Pioneering the Trail." Undated.
Accessed January 21, 2018. In 1850 four wagon trains turned west on the Laramie Plains, along Wyoming's southern border to

Fort Bridger Fort Bridger was originally a 19th-century fur trading outpost established in 1842, on Blacks Fork of the Green River, in what is now Uinta County, Wyoming, United States and was then part of Mexico. It became a vital resupply point for wagon ...

. According to one source, "Neither the number of wagons nor the number of people that eventually used this road to cross the Sierra Madres makes this trail significant. What makes this road unique is that Native Americans and their traveling companions did not just cross the

Continental Divide A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...

; they made a path over the mountains and through the Wyoming Basin." Gardner, A. Dudley. "Wyoming History: The Cherokee Trail - Part I." Western Wyoming Community College. Rev. 2002.
The trail was also known as the Trappers' Trail, but the Trapper's Trail from 1820 took a different route in Wyoming and had a southerly branch from

Taos, New Mexico Taos () is a town in Taos County, New Mexico, Taos County, in the north-central region of New Mexico in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Initially founded in 1615, it was intermittently occupied until its formal establishment in 1795 by Santa Fe ...

Route description

The route originated in Grand River near present-day Salina, Oklahoma. According to Erb, Brown, and Hughes, "The Cherokee Trail came west out of Oklahoma along the

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Valley in Colorado to the mouth of Black Squirrel Creek, a tributary of Cherry Creek (Colorado), following the latter to the

South Platte River The South Platte River is one of the two principal tributaries of the Platte River. Flowing through the U.S. states of Colorado and Nebraska, it is itself a major river of the American Midwestern United States, Midwest and the American Sou ...

. It went on north along the eastern base of the Rockies to the Cache la Poudre in the vicinity of Laporte and Virginia Dale then over to the Laramie Plains." The name of the trail originated from the 1849 trek to California of 130 Cherokees, with their 40 wagons, led by Captain Lewis Evans.

History

Parts of this trail had been traveled and reported earlier in the 19th century. According to Gardner, General William Ashley had used part of this route as early as 1824. Gardner also mentions that emigrants heading for Oregon wrote about the routes in and out of Browns Park in 1839. By 1849, three routes suitable for crossing the Continental Divide had been identified: Twin Groves, Wyoming, an unnamed location near present-day Rawlings, Wyoming and Bridger's Pass. The Cherokee Trail followed the Twin Groves route. The

outlaw An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. ...

L. H. Musgrove traveled on the Cherokee Trail from Colorado into Wyoming during the 1860s. A native of

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

, he came to California at the time of the Gold Rush. Apparently deciding that crime was more profitable than panning for gold, he was arrested and charged with murder in Fort Halleck, Wyoming, during 1863. Taken to Denver for trial, he was released on an unexplained technicality, and returned to a life of crime. Musgrove assembled a network of horse thieves known as the Musgrove Gang, who raided government posts and wagon trains along the Colorado Front Range, following the Cherokee Trail. Musgrove was finally captured and taken to jail in Denver. He started a rumor from his cell that friends were planning to help him escape, and that the citizens could not prevent this. Instead, a group of vigilantes demanded that the guards release Musgrove to them. The guards offered no resistance, so the vigilantes took possession of the prisoner. Quickly they moved him to the Larimer Street bridge and ended his criminal career by

hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

him beneath the bridge on November 23, 1868.[ http://www.americancowboychronicles.com/2015/08/little-known-old-west-gunmen-outlaws.html Correa, Tom. "Little Known Old West Gunmen & Outlaws - Part Four: L. H. Musgrove." The American Cowboy Chronicles. August 28, 2015.] Accessed January 21, 2018.

Notes

References

Sources

*Fletcher, Patricia K. A., Jack E. Fletcher, Lee Whiteley, "Cherokee Trail Diaries New Routes to the California Gold Rush Vol 1 1849, Vol II 1850." Sequim, WA Fletcher Family Trust, 1999. *Fletcher, Dr. Jack E., Patricia K.A. Fletcher, "Cherokee Trail Diaries Emigrants, Goldseekers, Cattle Drives and Outlaws 1851-1900, Vol III" Sequim, WA Fletcher Family Trust, 2001. *Marcy, Randolph B., Capt. US Army
''The Prairie Traveler''
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1859. (retrieved fro
''The Kansas Collection''
August 18, 2006). *''Dictionary of American History'' by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940 *Whiteley, Lee. ''The Cherokee Trail: Bent's Old Fort to Fort Bridger'' *Gehling, Richard
"Colorado's Cherokee Trail'
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140528105110/https://sites.google.com/site/coloradoscherokeetrail/ , date=2014-05-28 .

External links

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20161119121652/http://www.wwcc.wy.edu/wyo_hist/cherokee2.htm "Wyoming History: The Cherokee Trail - Part 2." Western Wyoming Community College.
"Wyoming History: The Cherokee Trail - Part 3" Western Wyoming Community College.

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20161016082501/http://www.wwcc.wy.edu/wyo_hist/cherokee5.htm "Wyoming History: The Cherokee Trail - Part 5" Western Wyoming Community College. 19th-century Cherokee history Native American trails in the United States Trails and roads in the American Old West Historic trails and roads in Colorado Historic trails and roads in Kansas Historic trails and roads in Oklahoma Historic trails and roads in Wyoming Native American history of Kansas Native American history of Oklahoma Native American history of Wyoming Native American history of Colorado