any of several trails of westward migration in the United States. The term is sometimes used to mean all the trails westward from the Missouri to the Pacific and sometimes for the central trails only. Particularly, the term has been applied to a southern alternate route of the Oregon Trail. It branched from the parent trail at the junction of the North Platte and South Platte rivers and followed the South Platte to present Julesburg, where it left the river and went overland to the North Platte, rejoining the parent trail east of Fort Laramie. The term is also particularly applied to a route to California that went west from Fort Bridger to the Great Salt Lake (thus duplicating in part the Mormon Trail), then on to Sutter's Fort in California; it was much used by California-bound immigrants.

See J. M. Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (1979); D. L. Smith, ed., Survival on a Westward Trek (1989).

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