The Applegate Trail at Goose Lake
Posted by: 
Volcanoguy
N 41° 59.597 W 120° 19.531
10T E 721526 N 4652490
History Marker at Stone Bridge.
Waymark Code: WM2KCB
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 11/15/2007
Views: 37
This History Marker is one of four markers located at Stone Bridge.
Marker Name: The Applegate Trail - Southern Route to Oregon
Marker Text: A In 1846, Jesse Applegate and fourteen others from near Dallas, Oregon, established a trail south from the Willamette Valley and east to Fort Hall. This route offered emigrants an alternative to the perilous “last leg” of the Oregon Trail down the treacherous Columbia River. The trail also offered a potential escape route, free from Hudson’s Bay Company control, should Britain and the United States begin warring over control of Oregon.
The first emigrants to trek the new “South Road” left with the trailblazers from Fort Hall in early August 1846. With Levi Scott acting as guide, while Jesse Applegate traveled ahead to mark the route, the hardy emigrants blazed a wagon trail through nearly 500 miles of wilderness arriving in the upper Willamette Valley in November. Emigrant travel continued along the Applegate Trail in later years and contributed greatly to the settlement of southern Oregon and the Willamette Valley.
Nature Provides a Bridge
Oregon at Last!
Emigrants using the Applegate Trail first viewed Oregon from Fandango Pass in the Warner Mountains. After months of weary travel, Thomas Fletcher Royal in 1853 was one of many travelers who found “a charming landscape.”
”That beautiful lake, with its fishes and birds, the sloping landscapes with their rippling brooks mandering down to the lake, and the dense forest on the mountain sides adjacent, all combined to invite and welcome us to these fertile lands in their virgin beauty. ...For nearly five months we had been trudging along over the sunburnt desert, among the prickly pears and sage brush, enveloped in sand and dust and poisoned with alkali. No wonder this seemed a real paradise.” Thomas Fletcher Royal, October 13, 1853.
Visit Instructions:
Include your thoughts and observations pertaining to this location and your visit. Provide any additional history that you are aware of that pertains to this location. If the marker commemorates a historic building tell us what it is used for now or share with us the circumstances of an earlier visit to bring this locations history to life.
Please upload a favorite photograph you took of the waymark. Although visiting this waymark in person is the only thing required of you to receive credit for your visit, taking the time to add this information is greatly appreciated.
Be creative.