Independence, Missouri, was for roughly three decades in the mid-19th century the most important departure point on the North American continent. The Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail, and the California Trail all began here — or within a few miles of where you are standing. Every spring from the 1820s through the 1860s, thousands of emigrants converged on Independence to organize into wagon companies, purchase last-minute supplies, and wait for the prairie grass to grow tall enough to sustain their livestock for the journey ahead.
The decision of when to leave was agonizing: too early and the grass would not support the animals; too late and the mountains would be snowbound before you crossed. Independence in those years was a controlled chaos of oxen, wagons, livestock, families, merchants, guides, and desperate people betting everything on a journey of two thousand miles. The trails that departed here opened California, settled Oregon, and enabled the trade networks of the Southwest.
More Americans passed through Independence in those decades than through any other single point in the interior of the continent. The trails are gone, but the spirit of departure still lives in these streets.