Long before Europeans came to this area in the 1500s, native peoples traveled on foot along trails first cut by buffaloes and other large animals as they moved toward water and grass, using those routes to hunt, raid enemies, and trade. The arrival of horses brought by Europeans transformed travel across the Plains by allowing faster movement over great distances and the carrying of more goods, which made trade among native peoples and with Spanish, French, and later American traders more common, with manufactured goods exchanged for furs. As Americans became increasingly aware of the riches of the West, especially land, they moved through this area in great numbers, and by the 1840s several older trails had been linked into a route from Missouri to new settlements in the Oregon country. This Oregon-California Trail carried thousands of settlers and miners and tons of goods from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast, while also bringing disease, loss of land, and the destruction of buffalo herds to native peoples. Wagon trains carried most travelers and freight, but after the late 1850s stagecoaches offered greater comfort and speed and helped ensure the safe and timely delivery of large amounts of mail across the continent. In 1860 and 1861, the Pony Express carried special letters and telegraph messages from station to station along the old trail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, in less than half the time required by a stagecoach, but it soon disappeared once the telegraph could send messages across the country at the speed of electricity. In the 1860s and 1870s, the Oregon-California Trail faded as railroads replaced it, with the Union Pacific and Central Pacific following the old trail along the Platte River and into California, the Kansas Pacific and Denver Pacific taking traffic from the southern trail loop through northeastern Colorado, and the St. Joseph and Denver City cutting through northeast Kansas along the St. Joseph branch of the trail. Later, automobiles and trucks on new road systems took most passenger and much freight business from the railroads, replacing winding paths, trails, and tracks with straight, paved roads.