Sublette and the Oregon Trail
"To Milton Sublette belongs the honor of first having used commercial wagons on what has been later entitled the 'Oregon Trail.' He began the journey near the mouth of the Kansas River, followed…
Mile 1088-1094: Dry Creek to Parting of the Ways
"From Pacific Creek the modern road parallels the trail to Dry Sandy Creek. This disappointing watercourse is ordinarily all that its name implies; but we, like the Forty-niners, were regarding…
Mile 1078: Pacific Springs Station
"All the time that my brain was wandering in this pleasant fog of confused ideas, my feet were carrying me out of the troubled times of '49 and into the…
Lodissa Frizell’s Last Entry
"'We are hardly half way. I felt tired and weary. O the luxury of a house, a house! I felt what some one expressed who had traveled this long &…
Mile 1043: St. Mary’s Crossing
"In the flat was a small marker for the site of old St. Mary's stage station, usually referred to as St. Mary's Crossing. Two buffalo horns, gray and scaly from…
Crossing South Pass
"The amount of earth and sky in view at once was rather appalling. Something familiar about the situation kept ringing a bell in my memory, and suddenly I audibly recalled…
Mile 1075: South Pass
"It is all part and parcel of the unsatisfactory nomenclature of the trail that South Pass is by no means to the south. The descriptive title was first used by…
Competing Routes to the West
William Lander, chief engineer on the Lander Cutoff from South Pass to Fort Hall, stationed "an old mountaineer, Charles H. Miller, at the South Pass [for the winter] to make…
Routes to the Pacific Coast
"From 1849 through 1860 approximately two-thirds of travelers bound for the Pacific Coast chose some other route than that through South Pass. Some 9,000 forty-niners and lesser numbers in subsequent…
Mail Service Beginnings
"[Emigrants'] persistent demand was for a rapid, reliable, and regular overland mail to supplement the sea mail, the various private enterprises which periodically were attempted, and the army couriers, who…
Government Role in Emigrant Experience
"Most pre-Civil War overlanders found the U.S. government, through its armed forces, military installations, Indian agents, explorers, surveyors, road builders, physicians, and mail carriers, to be an impressively potent and…
Like the Ascent of Capitol Hill
"Though scattered references to easy passage over the Rockies had been appearing in newspapers for the previous decade, it was explorer John C. Frémont who ignited the South Pass enthusiasm…
The Finger of God
"Medical missionary Samuel Parker traveled overland to Oregon in 1835, and in his Journal of an Exploring tour beyond the Rocky Mountains intimated that if an elderly minister of the…
Emigration Over South Pass
“'From 1812 to 1848 travel up the Platte was only minimal to moderate, historian Merrill J. Mattes observed, 'with a grand total of around 5,000 to Salt Lake, 10,000 to…
South Pass Geography
"Based on the nature of the modern landscape and its historic significance, South Pass extends west from Independence Rock to the Little Sandy Crossing, 122 miles over the old Oregon Trail…