After Henry Griffin discovered gold near present-day Baker City in 1861, migration patterns shifted and eastern Oregon became a destination for gold-seekers and settlers. Many early emigrants to western Oregon returned to the fertile Baker Valley, where they established farms and stores and supplied hay and produce to travelers bound for the mines, while large freight wagon trains became common in the 1860s. Oregon Trail emigrants knew the area as the Powder River Valley, where they found water and grazing, camped along sloughs of the Powder River, bartered with local Indians for cattle and fish, and later encountered itinerant traders from the Willamette Valley selling provisions. The road through the valley was part of an unimproved Oregon Trail that often spread across wide dusty ground, and slow-moving wagon trains could delay others. Emigrants approaching the valley from the east first saw the Blue Mountains from the desolate hills and often viewed them with awe or dread, then descended into the rolling plain where an isolated landmark, the Lone Pine, stood alone in the treeless valley. Known earlier to travelers and called l'abre seul by French-Canadian fur trappers, the tree guided Indians, fur trappers, missionaries, and emigrants until it was cut down in 1843, after which travelers knew it as the Lone Pine Stump.