In 1846, Jesse Applegate and fourteen others from near Dallas, Oregon, established a trail south from the Willamette Valley and east to Fort Hall, offering emigrants an alternative to the perilous last leg of the Oregon Trail down the treacherous Columbia River. The first emigrants to use the new Southern Road left Fort Hall with the trailblazers in early August 1846, and with Levi Scott acting as guide while Jesse Applegate traveled ahead to mark the route, they blazed a wagon trail through nearly 500 miles of wilderness before arriving in the upper Willamette Valley in November. Travel continued along the Applegate Trail in later years and contributed greatly to the settlement of southern Oregon and the Willamette Valley. In the northern Umpqua Valley, the trail split into two routes: the eastern route, established in 1846 by Jesse Applegate, Levi Scott, Moses "Black" Harris, and twelve others from Polk County, passed through Cottage Grove, Creswell, Eugene, and Junction City and is approximated today by River Road and Highway 99; the western route, an ancient Kalapuya Indian trace and a Hudson's Bay Company trappers' trail until the 1840s, was the most widely used alternate route, known as the California Trail, and became a wagon road in the late 1840s, with Territorial Road closely following it today.