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. The first emigrants to take the new Southern Road left Fort Hall in early August 1846 with the trailblazers, and with Levi Scott as guide while Jesse Applegate traveled ahead to mark the route, they blazed a wagon trail through nearly 500 miles of wilderness, arriving in the upper Willamette Valley in November. Travel along the Applegate Trail continued in later years and contributed greatly to the settlement of southern Oregon and the Willamette Valley. Emigrants on the trail found the descent of Canyon Creek the most difficult part of their journey, and some, weakened by sickness and hunger and beset by the loss of livestock, spent the winter of 1846-47 in this valley. Rev. Joseph A. Cornwall, unwilling to abandon his library, erected the first cabin about a mile to the north, where he and his family waited for better weather and health before moving on. In 1851 Dr. Dorsey S. Baker established the region's first grist mill and the town of Oakland across Calapooya Creek from the Cornwalls' cabin, and construction of the Oregon & California Railroad in 1872 caused the relocation and founding of a new town by Alonzo F. Brown.