Imagine traveling the overwhelming distance from Kansas City to Sacramento … on foot. Now imagine your trip without cars, without roads or bridges, without hotels or restaurants, without reliable maps, and certainly without GPS!

Over rugged mountains and arid deserts in hostile Indian territory, their only means of transportation is horsepower, of the animal variety. Your only means of navigation is the sun.

Do you think it sounds impossible? In the 1830s and 40s, tens of thousands of people from the East did not. They risked their lives to claim free, fertile farmland in Oregon or attacked the mother lode in California.

The Oregon Trail is the original and best known of all the migrant trails. Farmers established the route by migrating west to Oregon. The other known is the California Trail. Some settlers veered off the Oregon Trail and headed south toward California, establishing a route south.

In July 1846, Jacob Donner made a fateful decision. He led the Donner Party on a shorter, less traveled version of the California Trail. The legendary and disastrous expedition crossed the Great Salt Desert of Utah. Surprisingly, the group followed the advice of a trail guide who had never attempted the route.

Unfortunate and reckless, the group faced difficulties day after day. They didn’t reach the mighty Sierra Nevada mountains until late October. They tried to cross the range anyway. The first snows of winter trapped the group in the mountains for the winter. Rescuers reached the weakened group in March. Half of the original 87 had perished. Infamously, the emigrants found compromised cannibalism alive in order to survive.

As a result of such hazards, the California trail was little used. By the mid-1840s, few immigrants had settled in the Sacramento Valley. During the gold rush, traffic along the California Trail increased 50-fold. An estimated 30,000 to 45,000 migrants crossed the road that year.

You can experience sections of terrain crossed by the Donner-Reed expedition today. Silver Island Mountains Loop Trail near Wendover, Utah crosses Donner-Reed Pass at its northern end. This is an easy but remote clue that illustrates the difficulties the Donner Party would have faced. The beautiful and unusual scenery must have seemed appalling to the group as they struggled across the soft, muddy sand flats. It is interesting to explore dozens of side tracks off the loop.

A branch of the Oregon and California trails was called the Applegate Trail. The Applegate family led this arduous path after two family members drowned while crossing the Columbia River. They swore they would find a faster and safer route to Oregon. The first group of emigrants to use the track showed that theirs was neither.

After the disastrous journey, Oregon settlers condemned the route. It was longer than the original treacherous Indian territory and crossed over rugged and barren terrain. The emigrants abandoned the route. The only later traffic was that of Oregon gold prospectors rushing south toward the California gold fields.

Today you can drive parts of the historic Applegate Trail. A portion of the original trail is located on the Surprise Valley Trail in the far northeast of California. This complicated stretch of road climbs and passes over a rocky ridge encrusted with large boulders. Look out for the wild mustangs roaming the area today.

The nearby Fandango Pass 4WD trail also crosses the original Applegate trail. Many settlers and miners lost their lives here trying to cross the Warner Mountains. Historic markers indicate these historic trail sections.

Henness Pass Road offered migrants a better way to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains. This new pass crossed into California further north than Donner Pass, avoiding rough terrain around Truckee Lake. Henness Pass was such a good alternative that it was later transformed into a wagon road.

Most of the original Henness Pass Road route can be driven today. For 4×4 vehicles with large headroom, Henness Pass Road is a long, easy and scenic drive. Along the trail are many historic migrant camps and stage stop sites. Although most are little more than sites, the sheer number of them reveals just how busy the road must have been.

Less well known is the Mormon migration. The religious group pushed west for a home free from religious persecution. Salt Lake Valley was the perfect place. Soon overpopulation forced the expansion of settlements. Opening a route through southern Utah, they found Hole-in-the-Rock Pass – a 1,200-foot gorge into the Colorado River.

With no viable way to avoid it, they had to get through it. They blew up rocks, widened the crevice walls, and leveled a path, creating a series of paths along the edges of the cliff. An incredible feat of engineering, they veered a path into the steep face of the gorge by chiselling holes in the rock and inserting log supports. The result was a 50 foot wooden path. They planned 6 weeks for the expedition. It took them more than 6 months.

A long and engaging 4-wheel drive trail at Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument loops through sections of the historic Mormon Pioneer Trail. The Slickrock sections in the last 5 miles of the trail require short, steep climbs and careful wheel placements. It’s just a little scramble down the road to the Hole-in-the-Rock site. The enormity of the work of the early pioneers is still obvious. You can still see scrapes from the carts that descended through the Hole-in-the-Rock on the sides of the passage.

Learn more about driving these trails and hundreds more in Adler Publishing’s Backcountry Adventures series.