"One of the first, if not the first, suggestions of the feasibility of a wagon road from Missouri to the Pacific Northwest was made in an article which appeared in the Missouri Gazette late in the spring of 1813. The article was based upon an interview which the editor had with a party of men who had returned overland from Astoria with dispatches for John Jacob Astor. Niles's Register, vol. iv, p. 265, reprinted the article, and it is from this version that the following extract is taken."
