![](/media/1947/Fording the North Platte.jpg)
Wagon trains fording the North Platte, near Fort Laramie
Westport, Missouri, was teeming with
emigrants anxious to get on the trail. Marcus Whitman, who
returned to the East to recruit pioneers to settle the West with
Euro-Americans, was joined by Captain John Gant in leading a
thousand people across the Oregon Trail.
![Wagon Train WSHS](/media/54618/wagontrainwshs_312x233.jpg)
Tens of thousands more were to follow that year, and they
brought with them a quarter of a million head of livestock.
That same year, Thomas Fitzpatrick
guided Freemont to California.