April 4, 1849

Troops provided to escort “Forty-niners” (as the emigrants traveling to seek a share of the recently discovered gold in California were called) started out from Fort Smith (Sebastian County). This survey-and-escort effort was supported by a $50,000 appropriation sponsored by Solon Borland, one of Arkansas’s U.S. senators. A correspondent from the Baltimore Sun stated in an article later that month that some 900 wagons with 2,000 emigrants—along with thousands of mules, horses, and oxen—had left with the troops.