This east-west travel corridor carried some of the earliest emigrant trails and remained important after the arrival of railroads and highways. Early explorers including John Fremont, Jedediah Smith, Osborne Russell, and missionary Narcissi Whitman were among the first to record the route. It formed the original route of the Oregon-California Trail in 1840, and the first known emigrant group to pass through the Soda Springs area was the California-bound Bidwell-Bartleson Party, which began its journey in the spring of 1841. The trail was heavily used from 1849 until about 1859, but travel declined after the opening of the Lander Trail, which offered fresh food and water and bypassed Soda Springs. Traffic later increased with the establishment of a Mormon settlement at Soda Springs and the 1871 discovery of gold at Carriboo Mountain 40 miles north of town. These wagon roads were the only means of moving people and supplies into and through the area. After 1878, freight wagons linked with the Utah Northern narrow-gauge railroad at Arimo, then called Oneida Station, to the west. After the standard-gauge Oregon Short Line railroad arrived in 1882, Soda Springs became the primary station stop in southeastern Idaho and road traffic increased. When Idaho Territory was created in 1863, the existing wagon routes became territorial roads under government jurisdiction, but centralized state road building and maintenance did not come until well after Idaho achieved statehood in 1890. U.S. Highway 30 was constructed in southeastern Idaho in 1926.