The Oregon Trail

Crossing the Great Divide:
South Pass


South Pass--Wyoming

  • South Pass: "Crossing the Great Divide" The Sunset Magazine's article by Peter Fish.
  • OCTAs History of South Pass South Pass was the key to the entire overland emigration. The easy grade of this pass through the Rocky Mountains and across the Continental Divide opened the West for settlement.
  • South Pass: Places in the West The South Pass was the doorway through the Rockies for emigrants on the Oregon Trail.
  • South Pass Historic Landscape District "The Oregon-California Trails Association, this nation's only organization dedicated to the preservation, appreciation, and enjoyment of the overland trails experience, hereby urges the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management to nominate the South Pass Historic Landscape District to the National Register of Historic Places."
  • South Pass State Historic Site South Pass is the gentle ascent where the trail crosses the Continental Divide in Wyoming. It was called "Uncle Sam's backbone" by the emigrants. The first South Pass City was an 1850s stage and telegraph station where the trail made its final crossing of the Sweetwater River. That nearby site is now known as Burnt Ranch.
  • South Pass on the Oregon Trail Without South Pass, wagon travel across the continent would have been impossible and Oregon and California would probably not have become a part of the United States. There's no narrow gorge here--this gap in the Rockies is miles wide.
  • South Pass: The Cultural Landscape
  • South Pass: A Wyoming Ghost Town Gold was discovered in a creek called Sweetwater about 1842 and the settlement of South Pass City came into being.
  • A Landsat Thematic Mapper Image of South Pass
  • Who Discovered South Pass? The Detroit Advertiser having asserted that Fremont was the discoverer of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, a correspondent of the Detroit Free Press denies the truth of statement and the editor of that journal publishes this letter from Ramsay Crooks, Esq., of New York in June 1856.
  • South Pass, Mile 914 South Pass was the key to the Continental Divide
  • Lander BLM Beginning South Pass Review The BLM Lander Field Office is going to review some of its planning and management decisions for the South Pass area. The decisions deal mainly with the routing of such facilities as oil or natural gas pipelines and power transmission lines in the area. The public is asked to identify issues which should be considered in this planning review.

    Back to:
  • Trails West Across the Plains
  • Trails West Across the Southwest
  • Trails West Into the North
  • Trails West Main Links
  • The Oregon Trail Links to continue on your wanderings

    Send comments, suggestions or inquiries:

    [Home | Links]

    Created and maintained by Elizabeth Larson
    Copyright © 1996-2001 All Rights Reserved

    [Tracked by Hitmatic]