The Cherokee Trail
Posted by: brwhiz
N 40° 58.847 W 105° 23.598
13T E 466913 N 4536698
The Cherokee Trail was the predecessor to the Overland Trail which then was improved to become the Overland Stage Route.
Waymark Code: WMFGRA
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 10/18/2012
Views: 12
The Cherokee Trail was a shortcut for the Oregon Trail that lopped 150 miles off the travel distance but was only suitable to travelers that could travel faster than groups of wagons. It was instrumental in shortening the travel time for gold seekers heading to California. A Colorado Historical Marker just south of the Colorado Wyoming border reads, in part:
The Cherokee Trail
Fourteen California-bound prospectors passed right through here in 1849, roughly following present-day U.S. 287. But rather than continuing north to join the Oregon Trail (the continent’s main east-west thoroughfare), these impatient travelers forged a new route across the desert flats of southern Wyoming, parallel to today’s I-80. They eventually picked up the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger, having shaved 150 miles off the journey. Their road (dubbed the Cherokee Trail, after the gold party’s Indian members) lacked sufficient water and forage for plodding wagon trains, and thus it drew meager emigrant traffic. But its time-saving trajectory met the needs of U.S. postal officials, who adapted the old Cherokee road to create a new frontier mail route. Renamed the Overland Trail, it emerged in the 1860s as one of the nation’s main westward conduits.