Mile 890: BYX and Other Historical Facts
MORMAN SETTLEMENT: Anxious to obtain better mail service from the States, Hyrum Kimball, acting as agent for the Mormon BYX operation headquarters at Salt Lake City, was low bidder for…
Mile 1095: Parting of the Ways
"About 20 miles west of the Continental Divide, the main road forked at a spot called Parting of the Ways—a point of decision. From there, travelers could either follow the…
Mile 970: Independence Rock
"The great granite loaf of Independence Rock signaled temporary relief from the thirsty barrens, for it stands where the emigrant trail meets the Sweetwater River. Trail tradition held that reaching…
Mile 927: Emigrant Gap
"This leg of the trip, Emigrant Gap (today sometimes called the Poison Spider Route), was a bitter introduction to what lay ahead: long stretches of hot, hilly trail with little…
Mile 753: Crossing Fort Laramie
"Most travelers approached Fort Laramie from the main Oregon and California roads along the south bank of the North Platte River. This required fording a tributary, the Laramie River, just…
Mile 753: Fort Laramie
"Fort Laramie, the American Fur Company's post near the junction of Laramie Creek and the Platte, was by far the largest and most celebrated post in this region and was…
Mile 1115: Farson and the Green River Basin
"Crossing the Green River Basin redefines monotony. The plains roll on endlessly, blanketed by the same wearisome mantle of sagebrush and greasewood. Outside of the river bottoms and the few towns, there…
Mile 1075: South Pass
"The Sweetwater Valley took the emigrants smoothly uphill 1oo miles to the Continental Divide at South Pass. This fortuitous gap in the Rockies exists because of geologic happenstance. A Wind River-sized mountain…
Mile 970: Independence Rock
"A few miles upstream from where they gained the Sweetwater River, the emigrants came to Independence Rock—a half-mile-long ridge of granite that rises like a whaleback from the sagebrush sea of the…
Mile 937: Avenue of Rocks
"On the high, dry Wyoming plains, the Earth sheds her former grassland modesty and bares her rocky skin, wrinkled by time and mountain upheaval. The beveled edges of bent, tilted strata poke…
Mile 1464: Black Rock Station
[Not: The site is between Mile 1463 and 1464] "Also known as Butte, or Desert Station, it was named for the black basalt outcropping just to the north of the…
Mile 1403: East Rush Valley/Pass/Five Mile Pass Station
The first Pony Express station in Tooele County, UT, is located in Rush Valley while heading west from Utah County toward Faust on Faust Road, which is also the original…
Mile 1113: Big Sandy Station
"It was here [Big Sandy Station, Farson, WY], in 1847, that mountain man Jim Bridger gave Brigham Young advice on leading the first Mormon trains into Salt Lake. In the…
Mile 1075: South Pass
"But South Pass was the halfway mark on the wagon journey [to Oregon], and by now the pioneers had survived two months of Platte River storms, the outdoor cholera wards,…
Mile 642: Bridgeport
"After Bridgeport, Nebraska, the landscape changed dramatically, from grasslands to spare, dry sagebrush country, and the soil turned from sandy brown to pink. We were entering the magic, pastel geology…