 In 1849, Lieutenant Abraham Buford, escorting the mail from Santa Fe to the east, turned south at McPherson, Kansas, to follow the recently blazed Evans/Cherokee Trail with Captain Lewis Evans and Lieutenant Captain Peter Mankins, with 2nd Lieutenant George Van Hoose leading the expedition Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, and then connected with another trail to nearby Fort Smith, Arkansas.Starting in 1850 the trail was used continuously by gold seekers, emigrants and cattle drovers from Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and the Cherokee Nation.In 1850, a member of a wagon train en route to California discovered gold in Ralston Creek, a tributary of Clear Creek north of present-day Denver.