The Old Spanish Trail was an arduous 1,200-mile route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles that passed through Mountain Meadows during its heyday from 1830 to 1848. It served traders who loaded pack mules with woolen goods from Santa Fe each fall and returned from California each spring with Chinese goods and mules and horses for markets in Missouri. Along Mountain Meadows, the trail ran on the west side to a campsite at the south end of the valley, then down Magotsu Creek. Efforts to establish this trade route began as early as 1765, when Juan Maria de Rivera explored from Santa Fe to the Gunnison River in Colorado. In 1776, Fathers Athanasio Dominguez and Velez de Escalante were turned back by heavy snows while trying to reach California, after traveling as far north as the Provo area and camping between modern Milford and Cedar City. Later, Spanish traders made frequent visits from New Mexico to barter with the Utes for pelts and slaves. Jedediah Smith explored the western stretch of the trail from Utah to California in 1826-27. Mexican trader Antonio Armijo was the first to complete the circuit from Santa Fe to Los Angeles in the winter of 1829-30, and Ewing Young's trapping party from Taos may have followed the trail about the same time. In 1830-31, William Wolfskill proved its utility for pack trains, and brisk trade flourished for about a dozen years. After 1848, the trail rapidly fell into disuse. In 1848, discharged members of the Mormon Battalion traveling from San Diego to Salt Lake City drove the first wheeled vehicles over it, opening a new emigrant wagon route known as the California Road. Used by gold seekers, other California emigrants, and Mormon travelers, this wagon road shifted to the east side of the meadows to avoid Magotsu Creek. This was the route to California that brought the Baker-Fancher party to Mountain Meadows in September 1857.