Question: What 19th-century transportation route through central North America did William Bent and his brothers establish a trade buisness along?
Context: The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Independence, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880.  Santa Fe was near the end of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro which carried trade from Mexico City. The Boone's Lick Trail, or Boonslick Road was a 19th-century transportation route from eastern to western Missouri in the United States.  Running north of and roughly parallel to the Missouri River the trail began in the river port of St. Charles.  The trail played a major role in the westward expansion of the United States and the development of Missouri's statehood.  The trail's eventual terminus at Franklin was the start of the better-known Santa Fe Trail.  First traced by the sons of Daniel Boone, the path originally ended at a salt lick in Howard County used by the pair to manufacture salt.  Today the lick is maintained as Boone's Lick State Historic Site. William Wells Bent (1809—1869) was primarily known as a trader, and rancher in the American West, with forts in Colorado.  He also acted as a mediator among the Cheyenne Nation, other Native American tribes and the expanding United States.  With his brothers, Bent established a trade business along the Santa Fe Trail.  In the early 1830s Bent built an adobe fort, called Bent's Fort, along the Arkansas River in present-day Colorado.  Furs, horses and other goods were traded for food and other household goods by travelers along the Santa Fe trail, fur-trappers, and local Mexican and Native American people.  Bent negotiated a peace among the many Plains tribes north and south of the Arkansas River, as well as between the Native American and the United States government. The Northern Woods and Water Route is a 2400 km route through northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Western Canada.  As early as the 1950s community groups came together to establish a northern travel route; this was proposed as the Northern Yellowhead Transportation Route.  The Northern Woods and Water Route Association was established in 1974, and encouraged promotion of the route with the promise of an increase in tourist travel.  The route was designated in 1974 and is well signed throughout the connector highways.  The route starts at Dawson Creek at the British Columbia Spirit River Highway 49 and ends at Winnipeg, Manitoba, running through the northern region of the western provinces.  The Northern Woods and Water Route (NWWR) includes connector routes from west to east including British Columbia Highway 49, Alberta Highway 49, AB Hwy 2A, AB Hwy 2, AB Hwy 55, Saskatchewan Highway 55, SK Hwy 9, Manitoba Provincial Road 283, Manitoba Highway 10, MB PTH 5, MB PTH 68, MB PTH 6.  The halfway point of the NWWR is approximately at Goodsoil, Saskatchewan. William Becknell (1787 or 1788 – April 30, 1865) was an American soldier, politician, and freight operator who is credited with opening the Santa Fe Trail in 1821, which became an early major transportation route through central North America that connected Independence, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It served as a vital commercial highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880.  Becknell had used long-established trails made by Native Americans and Spanish and French colonial explorers and traders for years before his trip. The Old Town Center Historic District is a historic district roughly along Locust Public Rd. and Salt Pond Road in Eastham, Massachusetts.  The district encompasses Eastham's original town center, with a cluster of well-preserved 18th- and 19th-century buildings.  The area served as the town's civic center due to its proximity to Salt Pond, which provided access to the Atlantic Ocean, and was a major transportation route.  (Most of the district is now separated from Salt Pond by US Route 6, a four-lane road.)  The advent of the railroad in the 1870s shifted the town's economic and civic heart to the present center.  The Old Town district is 40 acre in size, with 42 mainly residential buildings contributing to its significance.  The oldest building in the district is the c. 1672 John Knowles House at 191 Locust Road.  The town's first town hall (1851) and first schoolhouse (1869) still stand in the district; the schoolhouse is a landmark visible from Route 6. Bent's Old Fort is an 1833 fort located in Otero County in southeastern Colorado, United States.  A company owned by Charles and William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain built the fort to trade with Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Plains Indians and trappers for buffalo robes.  For much of its 16-year history, the fort was the only major white American permanent settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements.  It was destroyed under mysterious circumstances in 1849. George Bent, also named Ho—my-ike in Cheyenne (Cheyenne people, 1843 – May 19, 1918), was a Cheyenne who became a Confederate soldier during the American Civil War and waged war against Americans as a Cheyenne warrior afterward.  He was the mixed-race son of Owl Woman, daughter of a Cheyenne chief, and the American William Bent, founder of the trading post named Bent's Fort and a trading partnership with his brothers and Ceran St. Vrain.  Bent was born near present-day La Junta, Colorado, and was reared among both his mother's people, his father and other European Americans at the fort, and other whites from the age of 10 while attending boarding school in St. Louis, Missouri.  He identified as Cheyenne. The Union Railway Car Barn is an historic building at 613-621 Cambridge Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It is a large brick 2 ⁄ -story building, with a distinctive round-arch central window and a stepped brick cornice.  Its ground floor has been converted to a retail storefront.  It was built in 1869 to house the horse-drawn streetcars of the Union Railway Company, founded in 1855.  It is the only surviving car barn of three built by the company in Cambridge, and a rare surviving element of the city's 19th-century transportation infrastructure. The Montgomery and West Point Railroad (M&WP) was an early 19th-century railroad in Alabama and Georgia.  It played an important role during the American Civil War as a supply and transportation route for the Confederate Army, and, as such, was the target of a large raid by Union cavalry in the summer of 1864, called Wilson's Raid.
Answer: The Santa Fe Trail