Bartleson–Bidwell Party
In 1841, the Bartleson–Bidwell Party, led by Captain John Bartleson and John Bidwell, became the first American emigrants to attempt a wagon crossing from Missouri to California.
The trail to California
The trail to California had been established not by the government, but by members of the "Emigrant Societies" formed in the 1840s. The efforts of three parties had established a passable wagon road over the two main obstacles: the Great Salt Lake Desert in Utah, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. The result was a journey of 2,008 miles in a single summer and fall, by oxen or horse or mules at 15 miles a day, which meant a voyage of about five months.
The party
In May 1841, the party assembled at Sapling Grove, near Westport, Missouri, under the organization of twenty-one-year-old John Bidwell. Numbering more than sixty, the group decided to travel together to John Marsh's Rancho Los Meganos at the foot of Mount Diablo in Mexican Alta California, in present-day Contra Costa County, California. Moving west, the immigrants traveled over the Oregon Trail with Father Pierre-Jean De Smet and a Jesuit party guided by mountain man Thomas "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick.
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