| abstract | - The California Trail was a major overland immigrant trail of about miles ( km) across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of California. It was used primarily from 1841 to 1869. It followed the same corridor of trails, following different river valleys, as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail till it turned off in Idaho, Wyoming or Utah to follow trails leading to the Humboldt River valley. Most of the trail across the Great Basin in Nevada followed the Humboldt River valley to obtain the water, grass and 'wood' needed by all travelers. Once in western Nevada and eastern California the pioneers worked out several paths over the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains into the gold fields, settlements and cities of western California. The trail was used by about 2,700 settlers prior to 1849. These settlers were instrumental in helping convert California to a U.S. possession as members of John C. Fremont's California Battalion in 1846 and 1847. By 1845, the province had a non-Native American population of about 1,500 Californio adult men (with about 6500 women and children), who lived mostly in the southern half of the state around Los Angeles. Most immigrants (nearly all adult males) lived mostly in the northern half of California. The minor armed resistance in California ceased when the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed on January 13, 1847 with the Californios who had wrested control of California from Mexico in 1845. California was bought and paid for from Mexico in February 1848 by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which terminated the war. After the discovery of gold in January 1848 word spread about the California Gold Rush. Starting in late 1848 over 250,000 businessmen, farmers, pioneers and miners passed over the California trail to California. The traffic was so heavy that in two short years these settlers, combined with those coming by sea across the Isthmus of Panama and around Cape Horn, had enough residents in California by 1850 to make it the 31st state. The California Trail route was partially discovered by American fur traders like Kit Carson, Joseph Reddeford Walker, Jedediah Smith as well as Hudson Bay Company trappers led by Peter Skene Ogden from about 1829 to 1840. A usable but very rough wagon route was worked out along the Humboldt River (then called Mary's River) and over the Sierras by California bound settlers between 1841 and 1844. The trail was heavily used in the summers until the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. The original route had many branches and cutoffs encompassing in all about miles ( km) total of different trails and cutoffs. About miles ( km) of the rutted traces of the these trail remain in Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and California as historical evidence of the great mass migration westward. Portions of the trail are now preserved by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the National Park Service (NPS) as the California National Historical Trail and marked by BLM, NPS and the many state organizations of the Oregon-California Trail Association (OCTA) .
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