In 1846, Jesse Applegate and fourteen others from near Dallas, Oregon, established a trail south from the Willamette Valley and east to Fort Hall as an alternative to the perilous last leg of the Oregon Trail down the treacherous Columbia River and as a potential escape route free from Hudson's Bay Company control if Britain and the United States went to war over Oregon. The first emigrants on the new Southern Route left Fort Hall in early August 1846, and with Levi Scott guiding while Jesse Applegate traveled ahead to mark the route, they blazed a wagon trail through nearly 500 miles of wilderness and arrived in the upper Willamette Valley in November. In later years, emigrant travel along the Applegate Trail contributed greatly to the settlement of southern Oregon and the Willamette Valley. After a difficult trek across the northern Great Basin, emigrants passed this area from the southeast shore of Goose Lake and along the shoreline of Tule Lake, then crossed Lost River on the Natural Bridge, where water and grazing were available, though Rachel Taylor wrote in 1851 that the road was rock enough to break every wagon to pieces. Indians, friendly at first, became hostile as increasing numbers of settlers moved through their lands, and conflicts between emigrants and Indians in this region brought enormous losses of life on both sides.