Located along the Pacific Highway 99 in Phoenix is a granite boulder with a plaque that reads:
The following text is taken from the National Park Service to briefly describe the history of this important trail into Southern Oregon:
The 1846 Applegate Trail—Southern Route to Oregon
The perilous last leg of the Oregon Trail down the Columbia River rapids took lives, including the sons of Jesse and Lindsay Applegate in 1843. The Applegate brothers and others vowed to look for an all-land route into Oregon from Fort Hall (in present-day Idaho) for future settlers. Additionally,
It was important to have a way by such we could leave the country without running the gauntlet of the Hudson’s Bay Co.’s forts and falling prey to Indians which were under British influence. -Lindsay Applegate
In 1846 Jesse and Lindsay Applegate and 13 others from near Dallas, Oregon, headed south following old trapper trails into a remote region of Oregon Country.
First they crossed the Calapooya Mountains, then the Umpqua Valley, Canyon Creek, and the Rogue Valley. They next turned east and went over the Cascade Mountains to the lakes of the Klamath Basin. The party detoured around the lakes and located the trail through canyons, over mountain passes, and across deserts, connecting the trail south from the Willamette Valley with the existing California Trail. In August 1846 the first emigrants to trek the new southern road left Fort Hall. With Levi Scott guiding the wagons, Jesse Applegate and others traveled ahead to mark the route. The trailblazers opened a wagon road through nearly 500 miles of wilderness, arriving in the upper Willamette Valley in December.
The Applegate Trail, part of the California National Historic Trail, contributed significantly to the settlement of southern Oregon.