The greater number of the leaders of the fur trade were properly to be called Western-born citizens. A few exceptions to this rule are worthy of note. John Jacob Astor was the first of the Eastern merchants to send out a commercial expedition into the far West; but really the first notable Eastern explorer personally to engage in exploring the head waters of distant Western rivers was Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Massachusetts, who, in 1832, led the first continuous expedition from New England to the mouth of the Columbia, a man whose pluck and energy deserved a better fate than he encountered. It was this same Wyeth who, in 1834, founded one of the first establishments west of the Rockies, that Fort Hall, often mentioned in the story of the fur trade, which was afterward sold to the Hudson Bay Company. Fort Hall was a trading post of much note in earlier times, and it is of interest to us at this juncture, in view of the fact that it was located on that great roadway later to be trod by thousands of feet that had begun their journey farther to the eastward than the valley of the Mississippi—the roadway to be known as the Oregon trail. There was early need for a trail to Oregon. The first of the hardy trappers of the Northwest told us about Oregon; and had we heeded them, we might to-day have an Oregon of continuous American territory running north to Alaska. Our trappers offered us this empire. Our “leaders” lost it for us. As it was, we nearly lost what Oregon we have to Great Britain and her own hardy trappers. Wyeth and his friends brought back word to the East, which at last the ever hesitating, ever doubting Eastern men believed. At last we summoned together our senses, our halting diplomacy, with the result that we kept our marches intact to the Western sea. This we were able to do simply because of the individual search that had been going on for the head waters of the Western streams, because the Western men had already made for us that Oregon trail, which gave us touch with the far-off American provinces beyond the Rockies. To-day, to the average resident of the Middle West, Oregon seems farther away than California; but up to the middle of the last century it was much nearer and much better known; and it was so solely because, under the existing conditions of travel, it was more accessible. The Santa Fé trail did not go to California. The Oregon trail did go to Oregon, and over a plain and easy route. The Oregon trail left the Missouri River, as did the Santa Fé trail, at that early citadel of the trade of the West, the town of Independence. It followed up the ancient valley of the Platte, immemorial highway of the tribes, and led to the head waters of many streams now historic, even then long familiar to many of our early trappers and traders.