So practicable was this post of Fort Laramie, and so practicable also the route on which it was located, that in 1849 the United States government bought the old post, and used it as a military establishment, so adding to its long and exciting history. Eight years after the building of Fort Laramie, Fort Bridger was built by Jim Bridger, on a branch of the Green River, over the Divide, farther out to the west, along what had now come to be a universally accepted highway. Jim Bridger, possibly the first discoverer of Great Salt Lake, was, by the year 1842, ready to admit that the old days were over and done with. No more trapping for Jim Bridger. The West was gone. He must thenceforth feed Mormons, or guide government officers in their “explorations.” Bridger gave up the West as a squeezed orange at just the time Frémont was starting out to make his name as the “Pathfinder” of the Rockies. Frémont, and all the other explorers of so late a period, went west as far as the head waters of the Green River over the Oregon trail,—a road a man could have followed in the dark. The Mormons took over Fort Bridger in 1853, not liking so stable a Gentile institution thus near to their realm; but the Mormons forgot that they could not wipe out the trail that led to Bridger’s old log fortress. The trail brought on an ever-growing stream of travel. In time Fort Bridger, too, became an army post, and remained such from 1857 till 1890. Since the latter date it has been abandoned. We go to Europe to seek for interesting ruins, forgetting Laramie and Bridger and Benton, all spots with significant and thrilling histories. As to the great trail of the Northwest, considered as a transcontinental trail properly so called, its second stage might be said to begin in 1834,[38] when it was first used as a route straight through to Oregon. After that date the parties of emigrants steadily grew in numbers, among them not only men from Missouri, but farther to the east.