The Oregon Trail was a 2,000-mile-long (3,200-kilometer-long) pioneer trail that extended from Independence, Missouri, to Portland, Oregon. Migrants traveled along this trail in an effort to reach and settle the sparsely populated American West. It took migrants approximately six months to traverse the Oregon Trail and reach Oregon. The trail was heavily used from the 1840s and subsequent decades. Portions of the Trail are still visible today in places such as the Whitman Mission National Historic Site in Washington.