After the discovery of South Pass in 1824, years passed before the route was used extensively. Fur trapper and trader William Sublette brought a small caravan of wagons to South Pass in 1828, and although his party did not take wagons over the pass, they showed that wagons could be used there. Captain Benjamin Bonneville took the first wagons over South Pass in 1832. U.S. Government explorer Lt. John Charles Fremont was responsible for publicizing the route: scattered references to an easy passage over the Rockies had appeared in newspapers for a decade, but in 1842 he created enthusiasm for South Pass by explaining that a traveler could go through it without any "toilsome ascents." As knowledge of South Pass spread, a great western migration began, and in the next twenty years thousands of Mormons and future Oregonians and Californians followed the route.