A thousand miles of wagon ruts are still there

Follow in the footsteps of over 250,000 emigrants who travelled to the
gold fields and rich farmlands of California during the 1840s and 1850s —
the greatest mass migration in American history.

The California National Historic Trail is over 5,000 miles long and
covers portions of ten states. The part that makes it a place rather than
a route on paper: more than 1,000 miles of ruts and traces left by the
travellers and their overland wagons are still visible.

A quarter of a million people, passing over the same ground with loaded
wagons, wore grooves into it that have outlasted them by nearly two centuries.

What Congress authorised

The authorised portions include nearly 2,000 miles of historic trail that
was once the primary "road" taken by **farmers, business managers,
gold-seekers and fortune hunters** making a new life on the California
frontier. The route runs through ten states, from Missouri to California:
CA, CO, ID, KS, MO, NE, NV, OR, UT, WY.

The weather

There is no single answer, and the park does not pretend otherwise. Given the
trail's length, **consult local weather sources for the region you are
visiting** — the National Weather Service at weather.gov, searched for your
specific area.

A route spanning Missouri to the Sierra Nevada crosses prairie, high desert
and mountain pass. That variation is exactly what made the crossing hard, and
it is still what makes a single forecast useless.

*Location: National Historic Trail — CA, CO, ID, KS, MO, NE, NV, OR, UT, WY.
Source: U.S. National Park Service.*