Question: Robert Crouch Kinney was a native of Illinois that crossed what 2170 mi historic east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon?

Context articles: California Trail
West Brownsville, Pennsylvania
Oregon Trail
Malden Inn
Goose Lake Valley
Granite Pass (California Trail)
Boonslick
Robert Crouch Kinney
Cow Creek (Montana)
Route of the Oregon Trail

The California Trail was an emigrant trail of about 3000 mi across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of California.
 After it was established, the first half of the California Trail followed the same corridor of networked river valley trails as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, namely the valleys of the Platte, North Platte and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming.
 In the present states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah, the California and Oregon trails split into several different trails or cutoffs.
West Brownsville is a former important transportation nexus and a present-day borough in Washington County, Pennsylvania, United States and part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
 The population was 1,075 at the 2000 census.
 Culturally, by postal route, and socially, the community is part of cross-river sister-city Brownsville, for the two were long joined by the Amerindian trail known as Nemacolin's Path that became a wagon road after the American Revolution.
 Brownsville was the first point where the descent from the Appalachians could safely reach the river down the generally steep banks of the Monongahela River.
 Between Brownsville and West Brownsville was a shallow stretch, usable as a river ford astride a major Emigrant Trail to the various attractive regions in the Northwest Territory, the first National Road, the Cumberland Pike (Now U.S. Route 40 ).
The Oregon Trail is a 2170 mi historic east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon.
 The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas, and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming.
 The western half of the trail spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon.
The 1820s Malden Inn (also sometimes as "The Kreppsville Inn") and John Krepps Tavern is a historic building in the unincorporated bedroom community of Malden, Pennsylvania at the junction of South Malden Road and Old U.S. Route 40 (US40), the historic Cumberland Pike.
 The Inn's Malden location (present-day borough of Centerville, PA) along the western part of the Amerindian trail known as Nemacolin's Path transformed into a wagon road linking the river ford between Brownsville–West Brownsville with the former frontier towns of Washington, Pennsylvania and Wheeling, West Virginia, where the Emigrant Trail then allowed an easy crossing the Ohio River.
 The Inn had a good commercial site astride the old National Pike (U.S. Route 40 before the 1960s highway construction project) about three miles west of the long climb up from West Brownsville and Denbo Heights, PA being located at the former junction of Malden Road connecting northwards to Coal Center and California situated about half-the-way to Centerville from the Brownsville ford and the ferry terminus below Blainsburg just North-northeast of West Brownsville.
The Goose Lake Valley is located in south-central Oregon and northeastern California in the United States.
 It is a high valley at the northwestern corner of North America's Great Basin.
 Much of the valley floor is covered by Goose Lake, a large endorheic lake that straddles the Oregon–California border.
 Native Americans inhabited the Goose Lake Valley for thousands of years before explorers arrived in the 19th century.
 The pioneer wagon route known as the Applegate Trail crossed the Goose Lake Valley on its way to southern Oregon.
 At the south end of Goose Lake, the Lassen Cutoff separated from the Applegate Trail and headed south toward the Sacramento Valley.
 Today, Lakeview, Oregon, is the largest settlement in the valley.
 Livestock ranching and lumber mills are the valley's main commercial activity.
 The Goose Lake Valley offers a number of recreational opportunities including hang-gliding, hunting, fishing, and birdwatching.
Granite Pass on the California Trail, located in what is now Cassia County, Idaho less than half a mile north of Utah, has historic significance dating to 1842 when it was found by Joseph B. Chiles to serve as an adequate emigrant trail route to come west toward California from the Oregon Trail route that went through Fort Hall.
 Chiles was then returning east to Fort Hall in a small group that dropped out of the Bartleson–Bidwell Party, the first group attempting to emigrate with wagons from Missouri to California.
 The Granite Pass can be seen from far away, coming from that direction.
 When Chiles brought a west-bound wagon group through the pass in 1843 it became established.
 The California Trail eventually evolved and went through this pass; Chiles led seven different groups through the pass.
 When first used for emigrants as a wagon trail, it was part of Mexico.
The Boonslick, or Boone's Lick Country, is a cultural region of Missouri along the Missouri River that played an important role in the westward expansion of the United States and the development of Missouri's statehood in the early 19th century.
 The Boone's Lick Trail, a route paralleling the north bank of the river between St. Charles and Franklin, Missouri, was the primary thoroughfare for settlers moving westward from St. Louis in the early 19th century.
 Its terminus in Franklin marked the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail, which eventually became a major conduit for Spanish trade in the American Southwest.
 Later it connected to the large emigrant trails, including the Oregon and California Trails, used by pioneers, gold-seekers and other early settlers of the West.
 The region takes its name from a salt spring or "lick" in western Howard County, where Nathan and Daniel Morgan Boone, sons of famed frontiersman Daniel Boone, built a homestead in 1807.
Robert Crouch Kinney (July 4, 1813 – March 2, 1875) was an American businessman and politician in what became the state of Oregon.
 A native of Illinois, he helped found Muscatine, Iowa, before crossing the Oregon Trail and settling in what became Oregon.
 In Oregon he was a prominent businessman in the milling business and served in the Oregon Territorial Legislature before being a member of the Oregon Constitutional Convention.
Cow Creek is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately 35 mi long, in north central Montana in the United States.
 Cow Creek rises in the southern foothills of the Bear Paw Mountains in western Blaine County and flows east and then south, joining the Missouri approximately 25 mi northeast of Winifred, Montana—or 22 mi upstream from the Fred Robinson Bridge.
 Cow Creek flows down to the Missouri in a canyon that passes through the Missouri Breaks, which are severely eroded badlands that extend out on either side from the Missouri River.
 The floor of Cow Creek canyon provided a pathway of travel from the Montana plains north of the river, down to the Missouri – at the mouth of Cow Creek, Cow Island made fording the Missouri easier – a steep but short trail on the south bank of the Missouri opposite Cow Creek completed this route which led from the northern Montana plains to the central and southern Montana plains.
 This pathway was used by migrating buffalo/bison and nomadic American Natives for centuries.
 During the steamboat era on the Missouri River, when low water prevented riverboats getting up to Fort Benton, the mouth of Cow Creek became a river landing and freighting depot, and it was the start of the Cow Island Trail by which freight was moved on to Fort Benton by going north up Cow Creek and then west.
 In 1877 the Nez Perce Indian Tribe, fleeing to Canada, had several skirmishes along Cow Creek including the "Battle of Cow Island", and several days later at a camp on Cow Creek the Nez Perce, thinking themselves now beyond the reach of the U.S. Army, made the fateful decision to slow down, rather than push on for the Canada–US border.
 Today, modern highways have by passed Cow Creek, and the buffalo and the nomadic Indian are gone.
 Cow Creek is dormant, in one of the most remote spots of the isolated regions of the vast area known as the Montana Missouri Breaks.
The historic 2170 mi Oregon Trail connected various towns along the Missouri River to Oregon's Willamette Valley.
 It was used during the 19th century by Great Plains pioneers who were seeking fertile land in the West and North.