Westport, founded in 1834 by John C. McCoy and platted around his trading post, became a major outfitting point for the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trails, with its early prosperity tied to its landing on the Missouri River four miles north of town. Independence led Santa Fe outfitting through the 1830s, but as commerce expanded to emigrant wagon trains bound for Oregon and California, Westport matched and by the 1850s surpassed Independence in trade. The Bidwell-Bartleson party, the first emigrant wagon train bound for the Pacific shores, started from Westport in 1841; Francis Parkman began his 1846 journey west there; Thomas Fitzpatrick, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and John Sutter also spent time in Westport. The Santa Fe Trail began in 1821 when William Becknell led a trading expedition from Franklin, Missouri, to Santa Fe after Mexico's independence opened trade, and for almost sixty years it served traders, trappers, mountain men, gold seekers, soldiers, and emigrants, especially as a two-way route of commerce. In the Kansas City area, Westport and Independence were its two trailheads, with the Westport route passing through present-day Shawnee before both branches joined near present-day Gardner and continued southwest. The Oregon Trail, first established by mountain men and fur trappers, was being used by missionaries by 1836 and carried hundreds of thousands of emigrants west from the late 1830s through the Civil War; in the Kansas City area it followed the Santa Fe Trail west before branching off west of present-day Gardner, and by 1841 it also carried travelers bound for California, becoming commonly known as the Oregon-California Trail. By 1849 the rush for gold crowded the trail, though its enduring image is of families moving west one wagon at a time. Congress designated the Oregon Trail a National Historic Trail in 1978, the Santa Fe Trail in 1987, and the California Trail in 1992. In 1853, Solomon N. Carvalho, traveling with John C. Fremont's expedition, recorded camping at the Methodist Mission about six miles from Westport and then at Shawnee Mission a few miles farther on, references identified with the present Shawnee Methodist Mission site in Fairway and the former Shawnee Indian Church near present-day 59th Terrace and Bluejacket.
