Caleb Greenwood

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"Old" Caleb Greenwood (b. circa 1763, Virginia - d. 1849 or 1850, California) was a Western U.S. fur trapper and trail guide. He was associated with trapping expeditions organized by associates of John Jacob Astor in 1810 and by Manuel Lisa in 1812-1813. In 1815 he was independently trapping on the Arkansas River, and later traveled up the Missouri River in the company of other trappers.

In 1824 a group of the trappers led by John H. Weber, including Greenwood and Jim Bridger, crossed South Pass to trap on the eastern slope of the Wind River Mountains. Weber's party went on to what is today Soda Springs, Idaho, and then proceeded to a tributary of the Bear River to establish a winter camp. On May 23, 1825, Weber's party joined with a group of trappers led by Jedediah Smith in a confrontation with Hudson's Bay Company trappers led by Peter Skene Ogden. In July 1825, Greenwood joined the large group of trappers and traders attending William H. Ashley's first great rendezvous on the Green River.

In the 1820's, Greenwood married Batchicka Youngcau, who was half French and half Crow Indian according to family records. The couple had seven children: John (1827 or 1828), Britton Bailey (between 1827 and 1830), Governor Boggs (between 1834 and 1836), William Sublette (1838), James Case (1841), Angeline (dob unknown), and Sarah Mojave (1843). After 1834, he and a growing family lived for a time on a small farm in northern Missouri. After his wife's death in 1843, he again turned to the west. An history of California published by Theodore Henry Hittell in 1898 reports on a conflict between Indians and white settlers, including Greenwood's family, in Coloma, California. This account identifies an additional Greenwood son, David Crockett Greenwood. (Hittell, p. 890)

[edit] Sublette-Greenwood Cutoff

In 1844 Greenwood, along with Isaac Hitchcock, guided the influential Stephens-Townsend-Murphy emigrant party across the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Reputedly 80 years old at the time, on reaching Sutter's Fort he had completed one of the first overland wagon journeys to California.

Greenwood, returning east the following year with his two sons, pioneered a new route bypassing the Truckee River Canyon. This subsequently became a main route of the California Trail, over which hundreds of thousands of people followed in the California Gold Rush of 1849. While guiding the Stepens-Townsend-Murphy party along the Emigrant Trail in Wyoming, Greenwood suggested that instead of following the original trail south to Fort Bridger, the party leave the main trail near the Little Sandy River and head west across the Wyoming high desert and rejoin the main trail in the Bear River valley. The new route cut 85 miles and 7 days off the trip, but it was risky as nearly 45 miles of the new route were without water. The trail gained popularity after it was detailed in a popular guide book published by Joseph Ware in 1849. Ware mistakenly called it the Sublette Cutoff after Solomon Sublette, who had described the trail to him. The route reached the hight of its popularity during the California Gold Rush, when the need for speed outweighed the risk.

Historians now refer to the route as the Sublette-Greenwood Cutoff in honor of Greenwood^[1].

[edit] Reference

Kelly, Charles, Old Greenwood, the Story of Caleb Greenwood, Trapper, Pathfinder and Early Pioneer of the West. Western Printing, Salt Lake City, 1936
Hittell, Theodore Henry. "History of California." Vols. 1-2: Pacific Press publishing house and Occidental Publishing Co., 1885/1898 - California.