Most Astorians had survived the trip, but they had failed utterly to blaze a dependable trail to Oregon and had gotten there just barely ahead of the competing British expedition.
A party led by Robert Stuart (including John Day, who will be left by Stuart on the lower Columbia River after being declared mad) is dispatched back to St. Louis, leaving Fort Astoria in June 1812.
Wintering on the Platte River, they will arrive at St. Louis the following year, in the process discovering South Pass through the Rocky Mountains route via the Snake River in Wyoming, through which hundreds of thousands of settlers will follow along the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails.