The Old Emigrant Road ran from Salt Lake City, Utah, to the City of the Rocks, Idaho, where it joined the California Trail. Also known as Bluff Road, Old Traveled Road, and the Salt Lake Cutoff, it became the most practical route from Utah to the California Trail because it avoided hills and sand and provided feed and water for livestock, while Hasting’s Cutoff had proved impractical for wagons and livestock. Captain Samuel Hensley first used the road with ten men in August 1848, and on his advice Mormon Battalion members returning from California also traveled it, including a contingent of forty-five men and one woman with seventeen wagons on their way to Salt Lake City. In 1849-1850 an estimated 22,500 gold seekers followed this northern route to the California gold fields, and from 1852 to 1857 homeseeking emigrants with their families used it on their way to Oregon and California. It was also used for many years by local residents as the easiest way to travel to communities in the valley.