Beginning on May 22, 1843, nearly one thousand Americans left Missouri for new lives in the Oregon Country, and during the next two decades more than 50,000 emigrated over the more than two-thousand-mile Oregon Trail toward the land Abigail Scott in 1852 called the "Garden of the World." Along this arid stretch near Farewell Bend, emigrants faced a fragile landscape, privation, illness, death, bad water, and an extremely wearisome road even after much of the journey was behind them. Rivers and creeks, especially the Snake River, supplied food and water, and many emigrants traded with local Indians for fish, drawing on fishing techniques long perfected there for taking salmon. In the 1860s, after gold was discovered in Idaho, westbound emigrants often encountered eastbound prospectors, and in 1863 Reuben P. Olds established a ferry south of Farewell Bend that let travelers bypass the crossing near Fort Boise and follow an alternate route along the north bank of the river. Camp life and river crossings also brought confusion and danger, as shown in 1853 when Lucy was accidentally left behind and later returned by another train. For emigrants who had traveled more than 300 miles through Snake River Country, leaving the river at this site could be bittersweet because it had brought both hardship and abundance. Farewell Bend also offered a needed respite for people recovering from alkali water and sickness, though the dry, dusty road from the Snake River crossing to this place remained so arduous that many already exhausted oxen died along the way.