Cherokee Trail

[1] When the train formed in Indian Territory, Lewis Evans of Evansville, Arkansas, was elected Captain.

[2] In 1850 four wagon trains turned west on the Laramie Plains, along Wyoming's southern border to Fort Bridger.

What makes this road unique is that Native Americans and their traveling companions did not just cross the Continental Divide; they made a path over the mountains and through the Wyoming Basin."

[a] According to Erb, Brown, and Hughes, "The Cherokee Trail came west out of Oklahoma along the Arkansas River Valley in Colorado to the mouth of Black Squirrel Creek, a tributary of Cherry Creek (Colorado), following the latter to the South Platte River.

It went on north along the eastern base of the Rockies to the Cache la Poudre in the vicinity of Laporte and Virginia Dale then over to the Laramie Plains."

The name of the trail originated from the 1849 trek to California of 130 Cherokees, with their 40 wagons, led by Captain Lewis Evans.

The Cherokee Trail continued as an emigrant route as late as 1883 when the last wagon train from Wise County, Texas to Oregon was documented.

Starting in 1850 the trail was used continuously by gold seekers, emigrants and cattle drovers from Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and the Cherokee Nation.

Apparently deciding that crime was more profitable than panning for gold, he was arrested and charged with murder in Fort Halleck, Wyoming, during 1863.