The Old Spanish Trail was the longest, crookedost, and most arduous pack mule route in American history, created to carry New Mexico serapes and other woolen goods to Los Angeles and bring California-bred horses and mules back to Santa Fe across the deserts and mountains of Mexico's far northern frontier. In 1829, Mexican trader Antonio Armijo led the first successful commercial caravan, following a combination of indigenous footpaths and earlier trade and exploration routes to forge the trail network that became known as the Old Spanish Trail. In 1844, John C. Fremont followed the trail eastward from California to the Parowan Valley before leaving it, and his maps and diaries of its western section later guided Mormon settlers, who developed it into a wagon-passable route to Los Angeles in 1847. One of the best documented journeys came in 1848 with Orville Pratt's expedition, during which he described the harsh descent of Little Creek and then praised the Parowan Valley as one of the finest and most extensive valleys he had seen in the western country. In Iron County, Spanish explorers traveled nearly 100 miles on routes now followed by major highways, and Enoch later became a major trading post along the Northern Route in the mid-1800s. All routes joined at Fork of Roads east of present-day Barstow in the Mojave Desert, crossed Cajon Pass between the San Gabriel and San Bernadino Mountains, and then continued with relatively easy travel to the San Gabriel Mission and Los Angeles. The Northern Route, first blazed by William Wolfskill and George C. Yount in 1831, ran from Abiquiú through southern Colorado and central Utah, avoiding the rugged Colorado River canyons and using better water and pasture before rejoining Armijo's route near Las Vegas. The Mojave Road was a 188-mile crossing of the Mojave Desert long used by Indians, Spanish explorers, and missionaries, and first traveled by American trapper Jedediah Smith in 1826. The North Branch followed trapper and trade routes through the Rio Grande Gorge to Taos and southern Colorado, crossed Cochetona Pass and the Gunnison River Valley, and rejoined the Northern Route near present-day Green River, Utah. The Armijo Route, the first complete trip across the trail, began in Abiquiü northwest of Santa Fe, followed established trails to the San Juan River and west to the Virgin River, used the Crossing of the Fathers cut into the rock canyon wall about 75 years earlier by the Dominguez-Escalante party, and then went down the Muddy River across the Mojave Desert to the Amargosa and Mojave Rivers, through Cajon Pass, and on to Mission San Gabriel.