For more than four decades, tens of thousands of travelers camped at the Lone Elm campground, one or two nights from the Missouri River frontier jumping-off points, where a great lone elm served as a landmark and famous rendezvous point along the western trails. The travelers were diverse: some later became legendary, some sought profit in the freighting trade, some faced hardship and tragedy, and some pursued free land and a new beginning in Oregon and California. The land could be harsh, stream crossings were hazardous, and disease and infections were common; cholera was especially feared because it caused severe dehydration and frequently death. On July 14, 1847, Private Benjamin Wiley recorded the burial of John N. Collins, a private in Captain Turney's company, near the Lone Elm during the Mexican War. In 1826, a bold fourteen-year-old runaway joined a caravan on the Santa Fe Trail and camped at Lone Elm; that boy was Kit Carson, who in 1842 guided John C. Fremont's survey party to the Pacific and in 1846 guided General Stephen Kearny and his troops in the Mexican War. Traders, trappers, and frontiersmen also met emigrants and gold seekers there, exchanging stories that offered advice and comfort but sometimes also foreshadowed suffering ahead. In 1846, fourteen-year-old John Breen camped at Lone Elm with the Donner-Reed party and later recalled meeting hunters returning with furs, receiving dried buffalo meat, and hearing a warning that they had no idea what they would suffer before reaching California.