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2o6 A History of the Pacific Northwest

coast faded quickly from the memories of men. The Oregon Trail was already deep worn through the sand hills along the Platte and Sweetwater, Bear River, and the Portneuf, by the wagons of the Oregon pioneers; it was lined with the crumbling bones of their cattle, and marked by the graves of their dead; yet instantly, after the passage of the thronging multitudes of '49, it became the *' California Trail," and to this day most men know it by no other name. California, in a word, so completely overshadowed the Northwest in wealth, in commerce, and in population, that to the people of the country in general this state has seemed to be about all of the Pacific coast.