Along this great trail crossing the waters men bent their steps toward Oregon and California, men from the banks of the Missouri, from Illinois, and now even from far-off New England—where at last they had learned the “easy way West” and had begun to travel, as their friends to the southward had been doing for so many years. Thus, then, began the great Oregon trail, this road that might, with justice, have been called an open highway when Frémont “explored” the Rockies, albeit a highway almost unsettled, as it is to-day over much of its length, though peopled thick with mighty memories. The Mormons, the Missourians, the men bound for the placers of Montana, the valleys of California, or the warm slopes of the Oregon ranges—all these helped wear deep into the earth the old roadway, once clear-cut and unmistakable for more than two thousand miles west of that Missouri River which was the first route out into the ulterior West. It may profit us to fix in sequence a few simple facts in the study of the development of this great trail. At the start, of course, we come to our Frenchman De la Verendrye, who may perhaps have been the first to tread a portion of the later Oregon trail; since we know he forsook the Missouri and started overland, possibly up the Platte, crossing some of the country which the Astorians later saw. We hear also of the trapper Ezekiel Williams[36] in 1807, and some of the advance guards of the Missouri Fur Company, who were cutting loose from the Missouri River, and who were naturally looking for the easiest land routes. Then came Wilson Price Hunt, with his overland Astorians, seeking a way from the mid-Missouri River to the Columbia River. These established the course of the Oregon trail west of the Rockies, but did not trace it so distinctly on the east of that range. Later Robert Stuart and the returning Astorians were to mark out, east of the Divide, the route of the Oregon trail for much of its length. Then came Ashley, who went up the Platte and across the South Pass; and after Ashley came scores of other flap-hatted trappers and traders, all of whom rode, we may be sure, along the easiest ways; which meant the Sweetwater and the South Pass after the Platte was left behind. These followed the route of the Oregon trail for the compelling reason of topography. Now came Bonneville and his wagons to deepen the trail, in 1832; and two years later than that, in 1834, Robert Campbell and William Sublette built old Fort Laramie, on Laramie Creek, a branch of the Platte.[37] This establishment went far toward developing the Oregon trail into a regular route. It became a well known trading center, so that all the trappers and many Indians rounded up there; and in the days of the emigrants, soon to come, thousands of weary travelers aided in marking deeply the now unmistakable and open roadway that lay across the Rockies.