Overland Trail
The Overland Trail (also known as the Overland Stage Line) 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 stagecoach. History In 1850, U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers Captain Howard Stansbury's expedition was returning east. At Fort Br ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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California Trail
The California Trail was an emigrant trail of about across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of California. After it was established, the first half of the California Trail followed the same corridor of networked river valley trails as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, namely the valleys of the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming. The trail has several splits and cutoffs for alternative routes around major landforms and to different destinations, with a combined length of over . Introduction By 1847, two former fur trading frontier forts marked trailheads for major alternative routes through Utah and Wyoming to Northern California. The first was Jim Bridger's Fort Bridger (est. 1842) in present-day Wyoming on the Green River, where the Mormon Trail turned southwest over the Wasatch Range to the newly established Salt Lake City, Utah. From Salt Lake the Salt Lake Cutoff (est. 1848 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of fiction typically Setting (narrative), set in the American frontier (commonly referred to as the "Old West" or the "Wild West") between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the closing of the frontier in 1890, and commonly associated with Americana (culture), folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. The frontier is depicted in Western media as a sparsely populated hostile region patrolled by cowboys, Outlaw (stock character), outlaws, sheriffs, and numerous other Stock character, stock Gunfighter, gunslinger characters. Western narratives often concern the gradual attempts to tame the crime-ridden American West using wider themes of justice, freedom, rugged individualism, manifest destiny, and the national history and identity of the United States. Native Americans in the United States, Native American populations were often portrayed as averse foes or Savage ( ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Howard Stansbury
Howard Stansbury (February 8, 1806 – April 17, 1863) was a major in the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. One of his most notable achievements was leading a two-year expedition (1849–1851) to survey the Great Salt Lake and its surroundings. The expedition report entitled ''Exploration and survey of the valley of the Great Salt Lake of Utah, including a reconnaissance of a new route through the Rocky Mountains'' was published in 1852 providing the first serious scientific exploration of the flora and fauna of the Great Salt Lake Valley as well as a favorable impression of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who had settled there beginning in 1847. Career Stansbury was born in 1806 in New York City. He was trained as a civil engineer and joined the Topographical Bureau in 1828. In the service of the bureau he surveyed the James River in 1836, and the Illinois and Kaskaskia Rivers in 1837. In 1838 he oversaw the construction of a road from ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Chorpenning
George W. Chorpenning Jr. (sometimes spelled 'Chorpening'; 1 June 1820–3 April 1894) was a pioneer in the transportation of mail, freight, and passengers through the arid and undeveloped western regions of nineteenth-century United States. His efforts in the 1850s were vital to the integration of the then-new state of California with the established government and economy east of the Mississippi River. Early life Chorpenning was born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, the son of a county judge. Growing up in Somerset, he established a business in nearby Stoystown, Pennsylvania. In 1850 he traveled to California in search of gold. At the time there was need for reliable mail service between California and the eastern states, most of which was then being transported by steamship via the Isthmus of Panama. Utah-California mail contracts 1851 Route 5066 He teamed with fellow Pennsylvania entrepreneur Absalom Woodward, and they received a contract in April 1851 from the U.S. Pos ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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South Pass (Wyoming)
South Pass (elevation and ) is a route across the Continental Divide, in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Wyoming. It lies in a broad high region, wide, between the nearly Wind River Range to the north and the over Oregon Buttes and arid, saline near-impassable Great Divide Basin to the south. The Pass lies in southwestern Fremont County, approximately SSW of Lander. Though it approaches a mile and a half high, South Pass is the lowest point on the Continental Divide between the Central and Southern Rocky Mountains. The passes furnish a natural crossing point of the Rockies. The historic pass became the route for emigrants on the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails to the West during the 19th century. It was designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark on January 20, 1961. History Though well known to Native Americans, South Pass was first traversed in 1812 by European American explorers who were seeking a safer way to return from the West Coast than they had ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cherokee Trail
The Cherokee Trail was a historic overland trail through the present-day U.S. states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming 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. Among the members of the expedition were a group of Cherokee. 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 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John C
John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Epistle of John, often shortened to 2 John * Third Epistle of John, often shortened to 3 John People * John the Baptist (died ), regarded as a prophet and the forerunner of Jesus Christ * John the Apostle (died ), one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ * John the Evangelist, assigned author of the Fourth Gospel, once identified with the Apostle * John of Patmos, also known as John the Divine or John the Revelator, the author of the Book of Revelation, once identified with the Apostle * John the Presbyter, a figure either identified with or distinguished from the Apostle, the Evangelist and John of Patmos Other people with the given name Religious figures * John, father of Andrew the Apostle and Saint Peter * Pope John ( ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Henry Ashley
William Henry Ashley (c. 1778 – March 26, 1838) was an American miner, land speculator, manufacturer, territorial militia general, politician, frontiersman, fur trader, entrepreneur and hunter. Ashley was best known for being the co-owner with Andrew Henry of the highly-successful Rocky Mountain Fur Incorporated, otherwise known as "Ashley's Hundred" for the famous mountain men working for the firm from 1822 to 1834. Early life and ventures Although born a native of Powhatan County, Virginia, William Ashley had already moved to Ste. Genevieve, in what was then a part of the Louisiana Territory, when it was purchased by the United States from France in 1803. Career On a portion of this land, later known as Missouri, Ashley made his home for most of his adult life. Ashley moved to St. Louis around 1808 and became a brigadier general in the Missouri Militia during the War of 1812. Before the war, he did some real estate speculation and earned a small fortune manufact ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Laramie Plains
The Laramie Plains is an arid highland at an elevation of approx. in south central Wyoming in the United States. The plains extend along the upper basin of the Laramie River on the east side of the Medicine Bow Range. The city of Laramie is the largest community in the valley. The plains are separated from the Great Plains to the east by the Laramie Mountains, a spur of the Front Range that extends northward from Larimer County, Colorado west of Cheyenne. The high altitude of the region makes for a cold climate and a relatively short growing season. Unsuitable to most cultivation, the plains have historically been used for livestock raising, primarily of sheep and cattle. Geography In 1842 and 1843 John Charles Fremont explored in Wyoming and submitted reports and maps to Congress afterward. He apparently followed local usage and labeled the plains surrounded by mountains in southeast Wyoming “Laramie Plains.” His 1842 map used the term twice at the northern and souther ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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North Platte River
The North Platte River is a major tributary of the Platte River and is approximately long, counting its many curves.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed March 21, 2011 In a straight line, it travels about , along its course through the U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...s of Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska. The head of the river is essentially all of Jackson County, Colorado, whose boundaries are the continental divide on the west and south and the mountain drainage peaks on the east—the north boundary is the state of Wyoming border. The rugged Rocky Mountains surrounding Jackson County have at least twelve peaks over in height. From Jackson County the river flows north about ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Continental Divide Of The Americas
The Continental Divide of the Americas (also known as the Great Divide, the Western Divide or simply the Continental Divide; ) is the principal, and largely mountainous, hydrological divide of the Americas. The Continental Divide extends from the Bering Strait to the Strait of Magellan, and separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from those river systems that drain into the Atlantic and Arctic Ocean, including those that drain into the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and Hudson Bay. Although there are many other hydrological divides in the Americas, the Continental Divide is by far the most prominent of these because it tends to follow a line of high peaks along the main ranges of the Rocky Mountains and Andes, at a generally much higher elevation than the other hydrological divisions. Geography Beginning at the westernmost point of the Americas, Cape Prince of Wales, just south of the Arctic Circle, the Continental Divide's geographic path runs th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bridger Pass
Bridger Pass is a mountain pass in Carbon County, Wyoming on the Continental Divide of the Americas near the south Great Divide Basin bifurcation point, i.e., the point at which the divide appears to split and envelop the basin. The first documented crossing of Bridger Pass was by the Stansbury Expedition, returning east from an expedition to Utah and guided by Jim Bridger. A decade later the pass was in regular use by travelers on the Overland Trail and the associated stage line, these having been established along the route described by Stansbury and known since that time as the Cherokee Trail. To support the stage line, the Bridger Stage Station was established near the pass. The Overland Trail was used steadily between 1860 and 1869 until the First transcontinental railroad made the stage line obsolete. In modern times, the official route of the Continental Divide Trail The Continental Divide National Scenic Trail (in short Continental Divide Trail, CDT) is a United Sta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |