Oregon California Trail

	This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. Information from its description page there is shown below. 
Commons is a freely licensed media file repository. You can help.	
Description	Western trails in Nebraska. Blue = Mormon Trail; red = Oregon Trail/California Trail/Pony Express; dashed red = Oregon Trail/California Trail; orange = lesser-used trail routes; black dot = Fort Kearny	

Jump to: navigation, search

Route of the California Trail and Hastings Cutoff in the western United States
The Hastings Cutoff was an alternate route for emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings.
In 1845, Hastings published a guide entitled The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California. A sentence in the book briefly describes the cutoff:
The most direct route, for the California emigrants, would be to leave the Oregon route, at Fort Bridger; thence bearing West Southwest, to the Salt Lake; and thence continuing down to the bay of St. Francisco, by the route just described.
The cutoff left the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger in Wyoming, passed through the Wasatch Range, across the Great Salt Lake Desert, an 80 mile waterless drive, looped around the Ruby Mountains, and rejoined the California Trail about seven miles west of modern Elko (also Emigrant Pass).
The west end of the cutoff is marked as Nevada Historical Marker 4.
Illinois to Rochester
By 1845 the economy had recovered and the steamers were once again profitting from the increases in passenger trade. Steamship lines carried over 93,000 passengers that year, most of them on the daily runs to Detroit, Lake Erie and Lake Michigan ports. Travel to Chicago was frequent and usually took three to four days. For the well to do who could afford a $10 ticket, it was a very pleasant experience in the best grand hotel tradition. Fine dining and ballroom dancing along with luxurious relaxation made a trip on one of these floating palaces a holiday in itself. In 1847 one could take a train from New York City to Buffalo and then board the elegant Hendrik Hudson for passage to Chicago. Only five days after leaving the Atlantic seaboard you could be in Chicago.

Steamboating on the Illinois River was at its height in the 1840' s and 1850' s. Among the vessels navigating the river at this time were the "Garden City," the "Ocean Wave, " the "Cata*» ract," the "Acadia," the "Prairie State," the "Polar Star," and the "Belle Gould." The "Prairie State" and the "Acadia" were burned in the great St. Louis fire of 1849 in which several blocks of buildings and twenty-three steamboats were destroyed.  RUN FROM QUINCY TO PEORIA.

Packets from Peoria to Peru 

The Illinois and Michigan Canal ran 96 miles (154 km) from the Bridgeport neighborhood in Chicago on the Chicago River to LaSalle-Peru, Illinois, on the Illinois River. It was finished in 1848 when Chicago Mayor James Hutchinson Woodworth presided over its opening; and it allowed boat transportation from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. The canal enabled navigation across the Chicago Portage and helped establish Chicago as the transportation hub of the United States, opening before railroads were laid in the area. Its function was largely replaced by the wider and shorter Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in 1900 and it ceased transportation operations in 1933.