Hunt’s party laid the groundwork for future trapping expeditions across the Snake River Plain. Donald Mackenzie, who accompanied Hunt and later joined the British North West Company, returned to establish trade relations with resident Indian bands. After the North West and Hudson’s Bay Companies merged in 1821, annual fur brigades were led into the area by Alexander Ross from 1824, Peter Skene Ogden from 1825 to 1830, and John Work from 1830 to 1831. When American fur trappers appeared, it became Hudson’s Bay Company policy to deplete the beaver supply in southern Idaho. Trappers dramatically reduced beaver populations, and the fur trade declined by the 1830s. By then, however, the trappers had blazed the future Oregon Trail across southern Idaho for emigrants to follow. Settlers began emigrating in large numbers after 1843, and during the next 25 years more than a half million people journeyed west seeking free land, new opportunities, and helping to claim the area for the United States. Wagon trains left the Missouri River in early spring and reached southern Idaho in late summer, facing fear of Indian hostilities, blazing heat, choking dust, relentless thirst, and sheer tedium across the Snake River Plain. At Bonneville Point, emigrants saw the wooded banks of the Boise River below and knew they had survived these hardships. Upon arriving there, they had traveled 1,450 miles and completed two-thirds of their journey.