Bo Avery and his friend, Charlie Bixby, led a wagon train to California in 1858. Bo had fallen in love with a girl named Kate who had left the train at Fort Hall. Kate, her sister, and her sister’s husband went on to the Oregon Territory to get established in the new country.

Bo promised Kate as soon as he was done with his obligation to get the wagon train to California, he would come to Oregon to be with her. When they got the emigrants to Sacramento, he and Charlie got their pay. Charlie wanted to go to San Francisco because he had heard so much about it and he wanted to see the ocean. Bo decided to go along and then make his way north to the Oregon Territory and find Kate.