Beginning in 1836, the first wagon train made its journey over the 2,000-mile expanse of N. American wilderness from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon. Travelers crossed hundreds of miles of plains in Kansas and Nebraska before reaching the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming, then dropping down into the valleys of Idaho, and crossing into the Blue Mountains in Oregon. The promise of free land due to the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 was a huge draw for many families, though the decision to move west did not come without consequences. The journey was often arduous and cost many people their lives. Thousands of Native Americans were displaced when Europeans used the concept of Manifest Destiny paired with force and often violence to take the land. In all, somewhere around 400,000 people used the Overland Trails to emigrate to the West. Others used similar routes such as the California Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, or the Mormon Trail to make homes for themselves in various settlements along the way. Westward expansion caused the US to look the way it does today and would not have been possible without the Oregon Trail.