Built in 1850, the Michigan Bluff to Last Chance section of the Western States Trail through the Sierra Nevada later became a maintained toll trail, perhaps one of only a few toll trails in the state. As early as 1850, pack trains carried supplies along this narrow, circuitous route linking the mining camps of Michigan Bluff, Deadwood, and Last Chance, whose residents depended on local freight companies for foodstuffs, clothing, mining tools, drugs, and other goods, especially during winter when access was difficult. Because wagons could not negotiate the trail, large mule pack trains brought supplies in and carried out gold worth millions of dollars over many years. By 1852, the trail was in full use and cut in half the time required to reach Deadwood and Last Chance from the Foresthill Divide. Between 1849 and 1850, camps along the present day Foresthill Divide were hard to reach by foot or wagon, but by 1851 the business communities of Michigan City, later Michigan Bluff, Deadwood, and Last Chance were prospering as population and gold production increased. Michigan Bluff, set high on the brow of two river canyons, was once an active commercial city of 3,000 people, and from 1851 to 1884 its mines shipped $100,000 in gold each month. Leland Stanford laid the foundation of his fortune there from 1853 to 1855. Gold mining by blasting, washing, and sluicing radically altered the landscape, stripping soil as deep as 150 feet from acres of land, exposing bedrock, and leaving bare slopes vulnerable to erosion and landslides. As miners washed an ancient river channel, the ground beneath Michigan City began to settle and slip toward the canyon, and in 1859 the city was moved to its present site.