<P> With the passes of the Sierras and the Rocky Mountains blocked in winter, another winter route, the Mormon Road between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles was developed by a Mormon expedition from their new settlements at and around Salt Lake City, and by some Mormon Battalion soldiers returning to Utah in 1847--48 . The first significant use of the route was by parties of Forty - Niners late in 1849, and by some Mormon trains, to avoid crossing the snow bound Sierra Nevada Mountains by linking up with the Old Spanish Trail in southern Utah and closely following it, with alterations to the route of the mule trails only to allow wagons to traverse it for the first time . Soon afterward it was the route Mormon colonists followed to settle southwestern Utah, a mission in Las Vegas and a colony in San Bernardino, California . This wagon route, also called by some of its early travelers the Southern Route, of the California Trail, remained a minor migration route and in the early 1850s a mail route . After some alterations of the route between Cajon Pass and the border of California and in southern Utah, in 1855, it became a significant seasonal trade route between California and Utah, until 1869, when the transcontinental railroad ended Utah's winter isolation . </P> <P> Up to 50,000 people, or one - tenth of the emigrants who attempted the crossing continent, died during the trip, most from infectious disease such as cholera, spread by poor sanitation: with thousands traveling along or near the same watercourses each summer, downstream travelers were susceptible to ingesting upstream wastewater including bodily waste . Hostile confrontations with Native Americans, although often feared by the emigrants, were comparatively rare, prior to the American Civil War . Most emigrants traveled in large parties or "trains" of up to several hundred wagons led by a wagon master . In 1859 the government published a guidebook written by Captain Randolph B. Marcy, called The Prairie Traveler, in order to help emigrants prepare for the journey . </P> <P> The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th - century transportation route through central North America that connected Independence, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico . Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880 . Santa Fe was near the end of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro which carried trade from Mexico City . </P> <P> The route skirted the northern edge and crossed the north - western corner of Comancheria, the territory of the Comanches, who demanded compensation for granting passage to the trail, and represented another market for American traders . Comanche raiding farther south in Mexico isolated New Mexico, making it more dependent on the American trade, and provided the Comanches with a steady supply of horses for sale . By the 1840s trail traffic along the Arkansas Valley was so heavy that bison herds could not reach important seasonal grazing land, contributing to their collapse which in turn hastened the decline of Comanche power in the region . The Trail was used as the 1846 U.S. invasion route of New Mexico during the Mexican--American War . </P>

What were the three routes of travel to california's gold fields