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Settlers following these 'Westward ways' were spurred by various motives, among them including persecuted Mormons seeking freedom of religion. After the end of the Mexican-American War in 1849, there many new enticing American conquests. Legislation like the Donation Land Claim Act and critical events like the California Gold Rush further incited colonists to travel overland west. There were two major wagon networks, one based typically out of Missouri and the other out of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. Three of the Missouri-based routes were collectively known as the Emigrant Trails, the Oregon, Mormon, and California Trails. Historians have estimated at least 500,000 emigrants used these three trails from 1843–1869, and despite growing competition from transcontinental railroads, some use continued into the early twentieth-century. Three of the major southern routes were the Santa Fe Trail, the Southern Emigrant Trail, and the Old Spanish Trail. The trip was arduous, fraught with risks from infectious diseases, dehydration, injury, malnutrition, and harsh weather, with up to one-tenth dying along the way, usually due to disease. These trail networks have become embedded in the folklore of the United States as one of the significant influences that have shaped the content and character of the nation. The remains of many trail ruts can be observed in scattered locations throughout arid parts of the American West. Travelers may loosely follow various routes of the trail network on modern highways through the use of byway signs across the western states. ==Trail choices== Travelers across what became the Western United States in the 19th century had the choice of several routes. Some of the earliest were those of the Mexicans in the southwest. American trade with Northern Mexico created the Santa Fe Trail between St. Louis and Santa Fe following an 18th-century route pioneered by the Spanish Empire. From Santa Fe American traders followed the old El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro southward to Chihuahua by way of El Paso del Norte. The Old Spanish Trail from Santa Fe, in Mexican New Mexico Territory to Los Angeles, in Mexican Alta California, developed in 1829-1830 to support the trade of New Mexican wool products for California horses and carried parties of fur traders and emigrants from New Mexico to Southern California. Following the trails pioneered by fur traders, the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri to the Oregon Territory developed crossing the central Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and northern Great Basin. Branching off from that route, some settlers southwestward on the California Trail from Fort Hall, Oregon Territory to Sutters Fort, in Mexican Alta California. Also branching off to the south was the Mormon Trail from Nauvoo, Illinois to Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. During the twenty-five years 1841–1866, 250,000 to 650,000 people "pulled up stakes" and headed west along these trails. About one-third immigrated to Oregon, one-third to California and one-third to Utah, Colorado, and Montana. Although it is often stated that the Northern trails began in certain cities on the Missouri River, emigrants following any of the three trails typically left from one of three "jumping off" points on the Missouri's steamboat serviced river ports: Independence, Missouri or Saint Joseph, Missouri, or Council Bluffs, Iowa (Once known as Kanesville, Iowa until 1852; after river dredging in the early 1850s, the latter town at the Missouri-Platte confluence became the most common departure point since it was close in proximity to the River Plattealong which the eastern trails ascend to South Pass above Fort Laramie). The trails from these cities (and several others) converged in the mostly empty flatlands of central Nebraska near present-day Kearney, in the vicinity of Fort Kearney. From their confluence there the combined trails followed in succession the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers westward across the full widths of Nebraska and Wyoming, and crossed the continental divide south of the Wind River Range through South Pass in southwestern Wyoming. The most common vehicle for Oregon and California-bound settlers was a covered wagon pulled by a team of oxen or mules (which were greatly preferred for their endurance and strength over horses) in the dry semi-arid terrain common to the high plains in the heat of summer. In later years, following the advice of Brigham Young, many Mormon emigrants made the crossing to Utah with handcarts. For all emigrants, the scarcity of potable water and fuel for fires was a common brutal challenge on the trip, which was exacerbated by the wide ranging temperature changes common to the mountain highlands and high plains where a daylight reading in the eighties or nineties can drop precipitously to a frigid seeming nighttime temperature in the low 40s. In many treeless areas, buffalo chips were the most common source of fuel. During the Mexican American War, the wagon to California road known as Cooke's Wagon Road, or Sonora Road, was built across Nuevo Mexico, Sonora and Alta California from Santa Fe, New Mexico to San Diego. It crossed what was then the northernmost part of Mexico until the 1853 Gadsden Purchase. During the California Gold Rush the routes to California used were increased by the Siskiyou Trail from Oregon. In the south the forty-niners used the Cooke Wagon Road, until some found a short cut, the Tucson Cutoff. This route, not closed to travel in winter, permitted travelers coming to New Mexico Territory on the Santa Fe Trail or on the San Antonio-El Paso Road developed in 1849, across West Texas to El Paso where it followed the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro north to link up to the Cooke's Wagon Road/Southern Emigrant Trail at the cutoff through the San Diego Crossing. In 1856, as part of an improvement of the route as a military road, a cutoff was built to Cooke's Spring from Mesilla, (part of Mexico until 1853). From Cooke's Spring the road ran to the Yuma Crossing into California and on to Los Angeles. This route became the Southern Emigrant Trail. From Los Angeles the goldfields could be reached by land over the two routes north, the old El Camino Viejo or by what became the Stockton – Los Angeles Road. During the Gold Rush era it was these routes by which many herds of sheep and cattle were driven to California and the goldfields. With the passes of the Sierras and the Rocky Mountains blocked in winter, another winter route, the Mormon Road between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles was developed by a Mormon expedition from their new settlements at and around Salt Lake City, and by some Mormon Battalion soldiers returning to Utah in 1847-1848. The first significant use of the route was by parties of Forty-Niners late in 1849, and by some Mormon trains, to avoid crossing the snow bound Sierra Nevada Mountains by linking up with the Old Spanish Trail in southern Utah and closely following it, with alterations to the route of the mule trails only to allow wagons to traverse it for the first time. Soon afterward it was the route Mormon colonists followed to settle southwestern Utah, a mission in Las Vegas and a colony in San Bernardino, California. This wagon route, also called by some of its early travelers the ''Southern Route'', of the California Trail, remained a minor migration route and in the early 1850s a mail route. After some alterations of the route between Cajon Pass and the border of California and in southern Utah, in 1855, it became a significant seasonal trade route between California and Utah, until 1869, when the transcontinental railroad ended Utah's winter isolation. Up to 50,000 people, or one-tenth of the emigrants who attempted the crossing continent, died during the trip, most from infectious disease such as cholera, spread by poor sanitation: with thousands traveling along or near the same watercourses each summer, downstream travelers were susceptible to ingesting upstream wastewater including bodily waste. Hostile confrontations with Native Americans, although often feared by the emigrants, were comparatively rare, prior to the American Civil War. Most emigrants traveled in large parties or "trains" of up to several hundred wagons, usually led by an experienced guide. In 1859 the government published a guidebook, called ''The Prairie Traveler'', in order to help emigrants prepare for the journey. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Westward Expansion Trails」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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