Pioneering the Trail 

Proceeding west along the Santa Fe Trail, in the forefront of the California emigration, they went to Bents Fort (CO). Leaving the Santa Fe Trail the train continued west up the Arkansas River to Pueblo. Here a split in the company occurred with a number of members forming a pack company, hiring guide Dick Owens and proceeding via Fort St. Vrain (on the South Platte River northeast of Denver) to the Cache la Poudre River, through southern Wyoming near the Colorado border, to the vicinity of Brown’s Hole and the Green River, and on to Fort Bridger, Wyoming

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The Captain Evans/Cherokee wagon company, joined by other wagons, proceeded from Pueblo north along the front range of the Rocky Mountains on the old Trappers or Divide Trail. This trail, east of Colorado Springs, ran over “the divide” between the Arkansas and South Platte Rivers, and down Cherry Creek to the South Platte where Denver now stands. Traveling northeast along the South Platte to the confluence of the Cache la Poudre River near Greeley, the Evans/Cherokee wagon train left the trading forts’ trace, forded the South Platte and proceeded west. With no guide, they again pioneered the wagon road from the crossing of the South Platte to Fort Bridger. Their route, west along the Poudre River through present Fort Collins to Laporte, turned north along the front range passing what would later become the site of the Virginia Dale Stage Station on the Overland Stage Route, onto the Laramie Plains of Wyoming.

At Salt Lake City the 1849 Evans/Cherokee wagon train left the main emigrant route that ran north, and instead traveled west around the south end of the Salt Lake over the Salt Desert. The route was known as the Hastings Cutoff; and the Evans/Cherokee wagon train may have been the only major one to take this trail in 1849, and one of  few to traverse this route since the ill-fated Donner Party in 1846. Later separations within the Evans/Cherokee wagon company on the Humboldt River resulted in members of the train arriving  in California on each of the three major trails--the Carson, Truckee, and Lassen. 

In early spring of 1850 four separate wagon trains crossed (in two weeks’ time) the Verdigris River, south of present Nowata, (OK) to follow the trail blazed by Lewis Evans in 1849. The first 1850 wagon train, under Captain Edmonson, would remain in the forefront of the loosely-organized caravan all the way to California. 

The first three, oxtrains composed of Cherokee and whites, were Captained by Edmonson (Edmondson, Edmiston) and Holmes from Arkansas, and Alfred Oliver from Missouri. Clement Vann McNair’s Cherokee train was drawn by horses and mules. Through Oklahoma, Kansas and most of Colorado, the 1850 route varied little from Evans’ 1849 route. East of Bent’s old fort, the Edmonson company hired Delaware/ French guide Ben Simons. At present Denver, Simons did not follow down the South Platte River to the confluence of the Cache la Poudre River as the Evans/Cherokee company had done in 1849; instead he crossed the South Platte River and struck north toward Laporte through present Longmont, Loveland and west Fort Collins. Holmes’ wagon train followed the route blazed by Edmonson, while Oliver, in possession of Lewis Evans’ 1849 Journal, followed the Evans/Cherokee route along the South Platte River to Greeley before turning west. 

The McNair train (following Edmonson’s route) stopped, spending two days panning gold on a small creek. John L. Brown, a Cherokee member who kept a diary, noted the finding of gold on a creek they named Ralston for the discoverer. (Note: Remembering this goldfind, some of the same Cherokee and their white Georgia relatives returned to Colorado in 1858 to pan gold. A discovery by the Georgians led to the Pike’s Peak gold rush of 1859.) 

On the north side of the Cache la Poudre all four 1850 companies struck the Evans/Cherokee Trail of 1849 and followed it north to the Laramie Plains. On entering the Laramie Plains north of the Colorado border, first Edmonson and then the other trains left the 1849 Evans/Cherokee Trail and turned west. Again the Edmonson wagon train pioneered a new wagon road that roughly followed the Colorado/Wyoming state line to North Park. After crossing the North Platte River, they traveled northwest to cross the Encampment River at Riverside (WY). The trains proceeded westerly, crossing the Green River near Buckboard Crossing (Flaming Gorge), reaching Fort Bridger and joining the main California Trail. This route became known as the 1850 (Southern) Cherokee Trail. 

In 1850 three wagon train companies, Oliver , Holmes, and McNair (now Captained by Thomas Fox Taylor), left Salt Lake to take the Hastings Cutoff route, taken by the 1849 Evans/Cherokee wagon train. Separations along the way caused members of these trains to arrive in California on each of two major routes--the Carson, and the Truckee. 

The areas of goldfinds or strikes were often named after the person, group or state the miners were from. During the gold rush the Cherokee, with their previous experience gold mining in Georgia, were associated with many bars, diggings, creeks, flats, etc. with the result that California had more Cherokee place names than any other state. 

Many of the members of the 1849 and 1850 trains stayed to follow their trade or profession; some went into business, mainly cattle. Starting in 1852 Arkansas, Cherokee and east Texas cattle were driven to California over the Cherokee Trail, in ever increasing numbers. Emigrant trains from SW Missouri, Arkansas and Texas to Utah, California, and Oregon, surpassed the cattle drives, continuing through the 1850s, 60s, and 70s. Many of the emigrant trains were composed of extended or very close families with all of their possessions and cattle. The most noted was the Baker/Fancher train from Arkansas, most of whom were massacred at Mountain Meadows, Utah in 1857. 

The finding of gold in 1850 (recorded in the diary mentioned above) led to the expeditions over the Cherokee Trail to Colorado in 1858. The stampede to the Colorado or Pike’s Peak gold rush in 1859 and subsequently to the goldfields of Idaho and Montana gave renewed use to the Trail. 

The eastward livestock drives of cattle and later sheep, from Oregon and Washington to the grasslands of Wyoming and Colorado in the 1880s were the last continental use of the Cherokee Trail. Homesteading in southern Wyoming and highways in Colorado appear to be the last local uses of the Cherokee Trail.