In 1846, Jesse Applegate and fourteen others from near Dallas, Oregon, established a trail south from the Willamette Valley and east to Fort Hall, giving emigrants an alternative to the perilous last leg of the Oregon Trail down the treacherous Colombia River. The first emigrants to use the new Southern Route left Fort Hall with the trailblazers in early August 1846, and with Levi Scott guiding while Jesse Applegate traveled ahead to mark the route, they blazed a wagon trail through nearly 500 miles of wilderness and arrived in the upper Willamette Valley in November. Travel continued along the Applegate Trail in later years and contributed greatly to the settlement of southern Oregon and the Willamette Valley. Beginning in 1846, Oregon-bound travelers crossed the Warner Mountains through this pass, which was also used by forty-niners during the California gold rush on a route pioneered by Peter Lassen in 1848. Early travelers mistakenly believed this ridge was part of the Sierra Nevada Range and thought that once they crossed it the trip was almost over, so reaching the crest was cause for celebration, including a popular nineteenth-century dance called the Fandango.