By the time Hollenberg Station was begun in 1857 or 1858, Gerat Hollenberg already had years of experience operating a road ranch on the Oregon-California Trail. A native of Germany, he had been drawn to the gold fields of California, Australia, and South America before settling on the Black Vermillion River in Marshall County, Kansas Territory, in 1854, where he sold supplies and draft animals to travelers on their way west. His new ranch on Cottonwood Creek in Washington County was meant to serve the heavy traffic from the southern branches of the trail, where wagon trains from Independence, Westport, and St. Joseph in Missouri mixed with those from Leavenworth and Atchison in Kansas, and where families seeking land, miners chasing gold, teamsters hauling goods, and soldiers all passed by, many stopping for supplies or repairs. Travelers had followed the trail since the early 1840s, and by the early 1850s as many as 70,000 people a year are thought to have used one branch or another; even before the station was built, those who came by this site could refresh themselves and their animals at Cottonwood Creek and a nearby campground. By the time Gerat and Sophia Hollenberg settled here, immigrant traffic on this part of the trail had decreased, but huge freight trains such as those of Russell, Majors and Waddell still passed continually, and express companies had begun stagecoach service. Coaches regularly stopped at the station to change horses or allow passengers to eat one of Sophia's hot meals, and company employees also lived there. A bill from April 1862 shows that the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company paid Hollenberg for housing three men and for feeding passengers and livestock, with meals billed at 27 1/3 cents apiece. During some eighteen months in 1860 and 1861, Pony Express riders sped along the trail, changing mounts at stations such as Hollenberg placed ten to fifteen miles apart depending on the ruggedness of the country, while a fresh rider took over at every third station and riders rested at the station between runs. The 1860 census listed one Pony Express rider, John Mussy or Massy, as living at Hollenberg Station, along with express driver John Witherspoon, while other employees tended crops and animals, did blacksmithing, or helped with household chores. After the telegraph put the Pony Express out of business, Gerat and Sophia Hollenberg continued to operate the store, post office, and stage station, but as traffic on the trail decreased they turned to general farming. Hollenberg also became an immigration agent encouraging other Germans to settle in the area, a real estate dealer, and a town developer who founded Hanover and Hollenberg, and as a leader in efforts to promote economic development he became involved in bringing the St. Joseph and Denver Railroad through the region, a change that nearly ended the Oregon California Trail around which his life had long revolved.