Massive freighting of supplies by ox and mule trains grew from the establishment of Fort Kearny and other western military posts, and the Mormon War and the discovery of gold in the territories of Colorado and Montana increased this trade, making Nebraska City a major freighting center between 1858 and 1865. Early freighters used the Ox-Bow Trail, which looped northward to the Platte Valley and west to Fort Kearny, but competition with other Missouri River towns led them to seek a shorter, quicker route. The Nebraska City-Fort Kearny Cut-off, which passed near this point, was originally marked by a plowed furrow of over 180 miles. In 1862 Joseph Brown brought to Nebraska his famed steam wagon, an invention hoped to revolutionize plains freighting, and bridges and other improvements were made to aid it, but the experiment failed and the wagon never got beyond the outskirts of Nebraska City; for that reason, the cut-off was also known as the Steam Wagon Road. Overland freighting reached its peak in 1865, when over 44 million pounds of supplies were shipped from Nebraska City, but construction of the Union Pacific Railroad across Nebraska signaled the end of major freighting on this trail.