Cholera outbreaks and pandemics
That year, cholera was transmitted along the California, Mormon and Oregon Trails as 6,000 to 12,000 are believed to have died on their way to the California Gold Rush, Utah and Oregon in the cholera years of 1849–1855. It is believed more than 150,000 Americans died during the two pandemics between 1832 and 1849.
Bozeman Trail
During the few years the trail was open to emigrants, 3500 traveled it. Indians killed between 40 and 50 of them. The short cut was at the time "most often called the road to Montana" and not the Bozeman Trail. While short in bee line, the actual road from the Oregon Trail to the mining towns was much longer due to the hilly and undulating terrain. Shorter or longer stretches of the route were altered every year to avoid the worst stages. The journey took around eight weeks. Many of the travelers had prepared themselves for the arduous trip by reading John Lyle Campbell's popular guidebook. Drowning and fatal accidents with firearms occurred. Some travelers came down with critical diseases such as "mountain fever" (Colorado tick fever) and never made it to their destination. Game like elk, mountain sheep and bear was shot an occasion, also buffalo. "The men are killing them in large numbers. I feel sorry to see such destruction. They leave tons of good meat every day to be devoured by wolfs at night", lamented travelers Richard Owen in 1864. The travelers grouped in organized "trains" with chosen people holding posts such as captain, train marshal and orderly sergeant. One train was made up of "wagons ... 150, men ... 375, women ... 36, children ... 36, oxen ... 636". Every fifth of those crossing the plains via Bozeman Trail was a woman or a child. Each wagon paid the train pilot, maybe six dollars in 1864. Being a route used by single emigrants and small families at first, the trail transformed towards a supply route with freight wagons carrying equipment and necessities of life to the new, western towns.