After the deaths of Jesse and Lindsay Applegate’s sons in the Columbia River rapids in 1843, the Applegate brothers and others resolved to find an all-land route into Oregon from Fort Hall for future settlers and to provide a way out of the country that avoided Hudson’s Bay Company forts and British influence. In 1846 Jesse and Lindsay Applegate and 13 others from near Dallas, Oregon, headed south along old trapper trails into a remote part of Oregon Country, crossing the Calapooya Mountains, the Umpqua Valley, Canyon Creek, and the Rogue Valley, then turning east over the Cascade Mountains to the lakes of the Klamath Basin. Detouring around the lakes, they traced a route through canyons, over mountain passes, and across deserts that connected the trail south from the Willamette Valley with the existing California Trail. In August 1846 the first emigrants left Fort Hall on the new southern road, with Levi Scott guiding the wagons while Jesse Applegate and others traveled ahead to mark the route, opening a wagon road through nearly 500 miles of wilderness and reaching the upper Willamette Valley in December. Along this route, emigrants faced hard travel and loss, while at Sexton Mountain Pass native people honored Rock Old Woman, a powerful figure in their tradition whose spirit was seen in the flat-topped mossy rocks and who was thanked with gifts and prayers for health by the last native people to walk the trail.
