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The Emigrant Trail is the name collectively applied to the network of wagon trails throughout the...

The Emigrant Trail is the name collectively applied to the network of wagon trails throughout the American West during the middle 19th century, used by emigrants from the eastern United States to settle lands west of Rocky Mountains. The term specifically applies to three interrelated routes: the Oregon Trail, California Trail, and Mormon Trail. Although it is often stated that certain trails began in certain cities on the Missouri River, in reality, emigrants following all three trails typically left from one of three "jumping off" points on the Missouri: Independence, Missouri, Saint Joseph, Missouri, or Council Bluffs, Iowa (the most common departure point after the early 1850s). The trails from these cities converged in central Nebraska near present-day Kearney, following the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers westward across present-day Nebraska and Wyoming, crossing the continental divide south of the Wind River Range in southwestern Wyoming. On the western side of the continental divide, the Mormon Trail split off from the Oregon and California Trails, southwestward to the valley of the Great Salt Lake into present-day Utah. The main routes of the Oregon-California