Known variously as the Pikes Peak Trail, the Denver Road, the Overland Trail, and the South Platte River Trail, this route dominated the movement of people and goods in Colorado between 1858 and 1867 and ranked among the great trails of American history. Travelers joined it at departure points along the Missouri River, followed the Platte River through Nebraska to Julesburg, Colorado, and then turned up the South Platte to Denver, 180 miles away. In its heyday, it carried perhaps 166,000 people, mostly fortune-seekers but also merchants, settlers, and homesteaders. In 1866 the Union Pacific Railroad reached Julesburg, signaling the end of the trail's great era, and by 1881, when railheads such as Sterling welcomed the newest engine of settlement, it had become only a memory. Sterling "Old" Sterling dated to the early 1870s, when displaced southern families arrived and planted wheat fields, and later "new" Sterling flourished as a rail, ranching, and farming community. On the treeless high plains, settlers lived in sod houses, affectionately called soddies, whose thick walls and tight joining with the earth made them notably comfortable in heat and cold. From these earthen homes, sodbusters created the great South Platte farm belt from Denver to Julesburg, with Sterling at its center. Although cattle remained the region's economic mainstay, sugar beets became a major crop in the early 1900s, and Sterling's population boomed again in the 1950s after oil was discovered. From trail days onward, Sterling has continued to play an important role in northeastern Colorado.