A provision of the act allowed the settlers of Kansas Territory to determine by popular sovereignty whether Kansas would be a free state or a slave state. In 1854, Kansas became a territory when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was signed. Though few people made their fortunes in the goldfields, the waves of people heading westward would continue for the next several decades - thousands of whom made their way along the multiple pathways through Kansas. Hundreds and thousands of ill-fated adventurers crossed the Missouri River, the Great Plains, and the mountains - some of them to success, but more to disappointment, illness, and death. The discovery of gold, however, on the Pacific Slope created the wildest enthusiasm throughout the land, and a tide of emigration to California set in. Before the discovery of gold in California in 1848, few but explorers, fur traders, trappers, and hunters, ventured to cross the Missouri River into the wilderness of the vast West.
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