[sound of steam engine train] Before trains steamed through the mountains, before cars coughed across the unpaved Lincoln Highway, before the early planes roared coast to coast in just 48 hours, [sounds of wagon train] the journey west was just a crawl.

It's here the wagon trains rolled.

Starting in the 1840s, the American Dream was tied to a team of mule or oxen, and these fragile wooden wagons.

♪♪ On these bumpy, dusty trails, there were no guarantees.

[Nolan Darnell] Just to gamble and say- leave everything behind and come out here and start a whole new life and hopefully, you were going to make it, spend that five months on the trail, and make it, and a lot of people didnt.

A lot of people perished along the way.

The graves of thousands of pioneers tell the story of the cost of this great journey west, a journey almost forgotten.

♪♪ Dust and sagebrush, tall grasses and giant forests try to steal and mask the last hints of the old trails — the traces of the wagon trains nearly lost.

♪♪ 170 years later, history buffs turned detectives have come to rediscover the trails and hunt those lost graves.

I'm Dave Courvoisier crossing the backcountry of Nevada with a new team of pioneers searching for the old trails of the wagon trains.

I'm joining this team of history hunters from a unique group called “Trails West.

” [Bill Bishell] Do a quick radio check.

Together, we will slowly cross a lonely wilderness.

Well literally walk in the tracks of the wagon trains, and touch the pioneer signatures scratched into rock walls along the trail.

[Bob Black] It's kind of a way of reliving history and seeing history in action.

[Jim OCallaghan] Every view that we look at is exactly what they saw.

[Bob] A lot of sections are basically pristine trails.

It doesn't look much different than it did when the emigrants came through.

It's like solving a mystery, trying to locate the trails.

We'll pour over the diaries of the emigrants, and see how their words reveal the lost trails.

[female reenactor] “Entered a beautiful canyon, a splendid looking place with perpendicular rocks for two hundred feet.

” October 2nd, 1853.

Ellen Burt.

[Bill Bishell] You can read the diary quotes in different places and know that right where you're standing, you know, such and such happened.

[Don Buck] Read the diaries, you read the hardships that theyre enduring.

[male reenactor] “This has been the saddest day of my journey.

I counted on this days drive, 367 dead oxen, there are many wagons abandoned.

” September 14th, 1849.

Pardon Dexter Tiffany.

Well visit the springs that kept their livestock alive and hunt for the graves of those left behind, and hear the stories that just flow out of these mountains.

[Dave] “One hill, we locked both wheels and put on ropes to let our wagons down.

” Abram Minges, August 17th, 1849.

And where they let the wagons down is right over here.

Its like the edge of a cliff.

[Karen Gash] These were ordinary people that decided to leave what they knew and go to the unknown.

We'll plant a marker on the emigrant trail, and hear the story of the 40-mile desert.

♪♪ And well journey through one of the great wonders of the American West, the remarkable canyon through which thousands of pioneers passed.

[Bill] Its these vertical walls that are several hundred feet high, spectacular.

Join me as we retrace the Great Western migration.

Out here, they are “Saving Americana — Hunting the Old Pioneer Trails.

” ♪♪ Everybody up!

All aboard!

Flaps are open, generators are on.

Line up!

We copy you down eagle.

[Sound of crackling campfire] Nearly two centuries since the wagon trains rolled past this very spot, people still end the day crowded around a campfire sharing stories... of the pioneers, the great exploration and tales of the adventures that changed a nation.

♪♪ A handful of wagons began rolling this way in 1841, following old trails carved out by Native Americans and mountain men.

Soon, a pent up wanderlust just cut loose in a dusty push west.

[Lindsay Burkes] When the trail started, Missouri really was the edge of the frontier.

In those days, it all began in towns along the Missouri River — places like St. Joseph and Independence, Missouri, where the town square was bustling.

The courthouse, then and now, was the center of it all.

[Clay Bauske] Independence was kind of on the western frontier.

I like to think of it as a funnel to the West.

And through this funnel, this jumping off point, thousands poured west.

At Gardner, Kansas, the Oregon, the California and the Santa Fe trails split apart — and pioneers poured onto the prairie.

In the spring of 1846, George Donner's party prepared to leave Independence.

He placed a newspaper ad looking for eight young men to join him on his journey.

“Come, boys!

You can have as much land as you want without costing you anything, ” he boasted.

The Donners did not reach their new land.

Many in the group froze to death here in the Alder Creek Valley, north of Lake Tahoe, trapped by an early snowstorm and a series of mistakes on the trail.

But the following year, the pioneers kept coming.

And when they discovered gold in California in 1848, well, the human stampede could not be stopped.

[Don Buck] It was one of the major migrations in human history.

♪♪ Across the plains, over towering mountains, through the deserts, the migration rolled on.

Hundreds of thousands dropped everything and raced west.

[Jim] It could be like commute traffic, with strings of wagons.

On one trail they called “The Roaring Road ” — now recreated each year with the Highway 50 wagon-train — it was so crowded, some people would wait days or weeks to get through the logjam.

[Ricky Newborn] Well, it was always busy, always had a... always had a roar to it.

These trains that would go up and down here, they would have double wagons hooked together, pulled by eight, ten, twelve horses.

[Bill Hill] Men saw it also as more of an adventure.

[Lindsay] Most of them really didn't know what they were going to find when they went to Oregon and California.

[Don] Some came out west just for the excitement, the younger ones.

You know, it was an incredible lure.

It was a moment in their lives they'll never forget.

But it's been nearly two centuries and long stretches of the roads the pioneers carved out of the wilderness are disappearing.

[Bill] These trails are an important part of our history.

It's why groups like Trails West and the Oregon-California Trails Association are so important.

[Dick Waugh] You're out hunting for history, and with the hope that you can save history.

You actually get out, you know, miles, several miles of trail, where it's quiet, so that when you're in it, you can hear the wind, you can feel it, you almost hear the creaking.

You can kinda feel it.

♪♪ ♪♪ The volunteers hunt for the trails and then mark them before they disappear.

All over the West, you'll find these sturdy signposts welded out of old railroad tracks.

[Bob Black] We have over 700 markers now installed.

We try to put markers at specific places, where theres good diary references or there's something memorable to, uh, mark there.

Each marker quotes an immigrant diary, each a snapshot into the history of the West.

[Don] Those diary accounts — and they're selected to be of interest — attract people more and it makes it more meaningful.

“Trees hundreds of feet high and four, five... ” [Karen Gash] “Road becomes deep with fine sand before entering Long Valley.

” [Jim] “We beheld a large valley, spread out... ” [Jim Greenhough] “We are now ascending over a very rocky road.

” Drivers or hikers use guidebooks to get from one marker to the next.

The top of the marker points in the direction of the trail.

[Bill] So these trails are very important, and there's lots of them still left out there.

[Don] We think we know where the trails are, but in fact, we're constantly improving our knowledge.

Don Buck was a busy history professor in Silicon Valley when he joined Trails West in 1980.

[Don] It's what historians try to do is preserve the past.

[Bill] The man's phenomenal.

He knows more about the emigrants than they knew about themselves.

His key tool — the very words written by the pioneers while they traveled.

[Don] And a lot of the gold rushers were fairly well-educated and realized the uniqueness of the experience and they wanted to record it.

He has collected hundreds of diaries.

[Don] I have, oh, probably 600.

There's probably a huge number, still, that are in people's attic.

He spends hours each day dissecting them, looking for clues.

[Don] You've got to realize my primary focus is trail description, because I'm trying to find trails.

[Bill] You can tell right where you are, just by following diaries.

Its- It is amazing.

♪♪ You're driving along.

Here's a diary, it talks about this red bluff, and you look around and go down the road a little ways and bam, theres this red bluff.

Or some of the diaries, they even made sketches, and it looks the same today as it did then.

Finding something out there that is mentioned in a diary is pretty special.

It excites me, it really does, seeing something from 170 years ago.

You'll find some of the most dramatic sections of trail in Nevada, in the middle of the Great Basin — what many call “the big empty.

” [Dave] Here, on this one stretch of the trail, you can actually see the ruts of the wagon wheels as they go up the grade here.

This land in Nevada's Black Rock desert has been saved to preserve the old emigrant trail.

I will spend several days with a Trails West team tracking just one of those trails, the Applegate.

It splits from the California trail near Imlay, Nevada, east of Lovelock, and heads to Oregon.

Here, crafty pioneers would leave letters for others further back on the trail.

[Ken Johnson] Journals talk about the post office there was a red barrel that people would drop letters in to tell follow-up people which way they had gone, how long they'd been there.

The Applegate Trail starts near Rye Patch Reservoir, just north of Interstate 80.

It's here the emigrants would leave the Humboldt River behind, a scary gamble in a dry west.

Up until this point, the old trails crossed half of Nevada, hugging the river to stay near water.

Without the river, they could not have gotten this far.

Writer Irene Paden said of the Humboldt, “It played such a large part in shaping the destiny of the West.

” ♪♪ From here, the pioneers would crawl across the desert, looking for a handful of freshwater springs.

The first one, nearly 14 miles away.

[Don] Easterners coming out west were just stunned by the... the deserts.

It's no better just south of this spot, where the California trail crosses the deserts death zone.

[Dave] What you can see behind me is just a flat expanse of desert, hot rock, sand and agony for the settlers, who had to cross the 40-mile desert to get to the next water.

The pioneers had to leave the Humboldt and trek 40 miles till they met the Truckee River at Fernley — and all this in the summer heat.

We pause to move one of the markers out here, a spot of much despair.

[Bill] 40 miles.

I mean, that doesn't sound like anything to us nowadays, but you get out there and start walking it, and it's hot.

I mean, it's really hot.

And you get thirsty.

And you look off in the distance, you can't see anything except more flat, white desert.

The pioneers would just toss out cargo from the wagons each mile they traveled.

Back in the day, you could follow the trail of debris all the way to California.

[Jim OCallaghan] They brought furniture.

They brought China.

They emptied their homes.

They brought all kinds of things, thinking that's what they could take to California.

The trail was littered with furniture and non-essentials.

It was all they could do to survive the trip.

Pieces of the “trail trash ” are on display at the National Frontier Trails Museum in Independence, and remembered by living historians.

And of course, theyd take too much.

You know, they tried to put household furniture and things like that, that grandfather clock over there.

Frankly, it was just too heavy and the load was just too big.

It has great value to the family, but sadly, it was too heavy.

You can still find small things out on the trails, but it's illegal to remove them.

[Dick Waugh] We find wagon parts.

- Guns.

- Kitchen knife.

Parts from oxen.

[Bill] This is tough.

You know, they started out pretty happy.

They had everything in the wagon, the dishes, furniture, I mean, everything they wanted for a new life.

The animals couldn't pull it anymore, they were too weak.

Most artifacts disappeared in the 1940s as people gathered metal.

[Bob] During World War II, people out here basically, uh, scavenging all the metal parts, just to, uh, contribute to the war efforts.

[Dave] Watch out for that one.

Back on the Applegate, we reach the first spring, and a sobering reminder of how dangerous the ride was.

♪♪ Up this small rise, we find the grave of Susan Coon, a 40 year old Illinois woman who died in childbirth in 1860.

[Leta Bishell] At the gravesite of Mrs. Coons, they erected a little monument for her.

The women in... in the wagon train took it upon themselves to take care of someone else's baby, and to feed it and take it on as their own.

And that baby came back when he was 80 years old to his mom's grave.

I just think that's amazing.

[Bob] They just bury somebody and then travel right on.

Matter of fact, a lot of times, only one or two wagons will stick back and bury somebody and then they'll try to catch up later on.

♪♪ There are other graves here as well.

Some marked, some, well, when Bill Bishell tries his hand at grave witching with copper rods, the answer may be in the mysterious movement.

[Bill] That's it, I have no control over that.

Witching for graves, same thing as witching for water.

Nobody understands it.

Some people try to explain it.

It's voodoo to me, but it works.

Some are skeptical, but all agree, this country took many lives.

[Dick] There's a lot of people who have been buried on that trail.

You know, some estimates are, you know, one per mile.

[Bill] There are many thousands of graves out there, no question about it.

I mean, the diaries talk about it all the time.

170 years later, an OCTA and Trails West team has come to a secret spot on the trail with a search and rescue cadaver dog.

They have long suspected unmarked graves are out here.

After probing the desert floor, making holes in the ground, the dog gets a sniff — and we wait for signs.

[Dog barking] That barking may have answered an old question — are these graves from the early pioneers?

[Dick] Those are human remains.

But of course, in the Great Basin, you find death everywhere.

We move on, up the Kamma Pass, the curve in the trail created by the oxen twisting back and forth up the steep hill.

[Don] Wagons don't go in a perfectly straight line.

They're swaying back and forth, back and forth.

We roll past the Painted Canyon mentioned in so many diaries, the layers of color distinct in the distance... past Rabbit Hole Springs, now crowded with herds of wild mustang.

♪♪ And then, onto some of the strangest land on Earth — onto the Alkali Playa of the Black Rock Desert.

It's basically a dry lakebed.

It's more famous these days as the home of Burning Man.

Tearing across the flat surface, our caravan kicks up a cloud of nasty dust.

The wagon trains faced this same nuisance.

Past Black Rock, we hit double hot springs, with water so hot, many a thirsty oxen, racing toward the spring, was boiled alive.

The pioneers cooked their meals in this spring.

Each mile we drive, we are reconnecting with our past.

Trips like these are a staple of Trails West.

Members are constantly researching the journals, repairing or adding markers, and bringing newcomers onto the old trails.

[Bill] Suzie, you got a copy?

Yes, I copy you.

It's not all wilderness.

This tour of the Beckwourth trail passes right by the casinos and hotels of Sparks, Nevada.

This trail, developed by Jim Beckwourth, crossed one of the lowest passes in the Sierra.

[Bill] The pass is right up there.

And became very popular — rolling right past his cabin, which remains standing.

Beckwourth, born to slaves at the turn of the century, was a legendary mountain man who carved trails out of the wilderness.

Parts of this wagon road are now covered by lakes and freeways.

Parallel with 395, out in that direction.

The guides show novice historians the sections that survive.

[Dick] You'll see the rut.

And all over, you will see the signs of this emigrant trail.

[Don] Trying to preserve the trail for people to see, to appreciate what emigrants went through.

This is really how you save this important part of our legacy — by showing new generations where we came from and continuing the hunt for the old trails.

[Steve Knight] I've been across the trail numerous times, all the way from Independence, Missouri, all the way out to here.

My wife always... always says, uh, they had it easy — they only went one way.

We've gone both ways numerous times.

Independence is loaded with signs of the trails.

Folks here celebrate this piece of their history.

Evidence of the wagons will just hit you in the face.

Giant swales are everywhere — the depressions made by the thousands of wagons that rolled this way.

[Drew Bodner] So many of them went through here, the... the swales are so deep, and they're not really very wide, so many of them went through the same area here, which is kinda unusual.

[Dick] If we get people out to the trail, come out on an event like we're doing here, once you walk on history, you're sold.

And while you're out “walking on history, ” you may just find what you were looking for all along.

[Don] When all of a sudden, you begin to find the trail and you say, “Ah!

I found it.

” Trail groups work closely with government agencies, so the old trails are not torn up by logging or road building.

[Bill] You know, if you move this road over just 50 feet, you won't destroy this trail thats right there and they have no problem with doing that.

[Dave] Okay, we're good to go.

But back on the Applegate, a new day takes us into dramatic country, a spot so breathtaking, we have to stop and admire it — as did the emigrants.

[Dave] Some of the pioneers found their way down here in this canyon and carved their names in the rock as they passed by on the trail nearby.

J.J.

Pool, August 24th, 1849.

What possible scenario would have led someone down in this little canyon here?

[Bob] Well, the emigrants were not much different than we are today.

When you see a place where you can easily leave your name, some of us still like to do things like that.

But nothing could prepare them for a deep gash cut into the mountains ahead... High Rock Canyon.

♪♪ [Bill] You come into this High Rock Canyon — its these vertical walls that are several hundred feet high, and there's water in the bottom, therefore some grass and stuff.

And some of the colors, different rocks and formations, I say, its spectacular.

We come upon more signatures scratched on the canyon walls.

[Ken] Unfortunately, it looks like somebody shot this with a shotgun.

And find other names marked with axel grease inside a long hidden cave.

[Bill] And the history going through here, and some of the markings that are left, names in the rocks, wagon ruts in the in the road — it's just a very special place.

Slowly, the canyon closes in on us.

[Dave] After traveling hundreds and hundreds of miles in wide-open spaces, the pioneers would eventually come to this gap, which they called “the narrows.

” And pioneer journals are filled with words trying to describe this amazing and terrifying place.

Explorer John C Fremont wrote of this very spot: “...a sort of chasm.

The rough walls of bare rock on either hand, and the narrow strip of sky above.

” [Bill] You're out in the middle of nowhere, there's nothing hardly manmade out there at all.

You're really totally off by yourself.

You can really feel what the immigrants felt.

You can see what they were seeing.

These days, the road is nearly as bad as in the days of the wagon trains.

[Sound of camera crashing into sagebrush] The drive is just a constant challenge.

Forests of sagebrush have pretty much overgrown the trail.

We are forced to wrap our vehicles in clear contact paper to keep the woody plants from stripping the paint.

[Sound of camera creashing into sagebrush] But the sage puts up a real fight and we are forced to advance as slow as the emigrants at some points.

♪♪ The Applegate rolls on for miles — entering California's Surprise Valley, clawing up the legendary Fandango Pass, remembered by the pioneers as a “brutal uphill slog.

” Legend has it, they were so thrilled to get over the summit and finally reach California, they danced the fandango to celebrate.

But of course, the scenery and the rich history of these places makes up for the challenge.

[Bill] A lot of people in our organization had family that came across.

That makes it very special to them.

Yeah, in the footsteps of their ancestors.

[Steve] When you walk in the trail, it's just, it's amazing what these people went through.

It's just- It's impossible to think of how they could do this.

[Ross Marshall] Its a story that needs to be preserved and told to the next generation about who we are and how the country came to be.

[Jim] It helps you appreciate the courage that they had as they moved forward.

They didn't know what was around the curve.

[Dick] That's the fun of it, yes, you're out hunting for history, and with the hope that you can save history, and that's the whole key.

You can't save it if you don't know where it is.

[Dave] Here at the State line, it was not the end of the line.

Wagons headed north, into Oregon's Willamette Valley, others, south to the California Gold Fields.

Hundreds of thousands had come west.

And these days, if you head out on the trail and let your imagination wander, maybe you'll hear the sounds and realize that these trails helped build America.

♪♪ [Dave] Nearly two centuries later, their journeys might have been forgotten but for a group of volunteers and researchers who wanted future generations to learn about these historic old trails.

Thanks for joining us on the Pioneer Trail, where they are saving Americana, remembering America's Great Western Migration.

♪♪