The Mormon Trail left the North Platte at Fort Casper and the emigrants crossed the river to follow the Oregon Trail at that point. They looked forward to meeting the Sweetwater River, the next one to guide them.
(Click on the photos to view a larger image)
The trail from the Platte River at Grand Island NE to the Sweetwater River in Wyoming had been an Indian road for centuries, but white men had not traveled it. Robert Stuart, part of the company sent by John Jacob Astor in 1810 to establish a fur trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River, discovered the South Pass in October of 1812 on his eastward journey from Astoria in the Oregon Territory.
The highway follows the North Platte a little farther to the Alcova Reservoir, where the altitude has risen to 5366 feet, here the road turns toward the Sweetwater River.
Independence Rock, one of the famous landmarks on the Oregon Trail, is said to have received that name from some trappers who celebrated the fourth of July there in 1825. It was common for those passing to climb the 128-foot rock and carve their names.
Alonzo wrote in his journal on September 23, “We camped at the Independence Rock tonight. A curiosity truly for many reasons that is a huge pile of barren granite, covers about 2 acres. The side is plastered over with inscriptions of the weary travelers names. I saw the Devils Gate. It is a channel where the river [Sweetwater] passes through the mountains of rock.”
Devil’s Rock, another famous Oregon Trail landmark, is about five miles west of Independence Rock. It is a 1500-foot long cleft, caused by an earthquake, which the Sweetwater River passes through.
Some say the name Sweetwater was given because it was the only fresh water in the area, but the more romantic version is that a mule, belonging to some French Voyageurs, packed with a load of sugar was lost in the river. The Oregon Trail followed the Sweetwater for about ninety miles to the South Pass and Continental Divide where it picks up Pacific Creek, which flows west to the Pacific.
Independence Rock
On September 24th Alonzo wrote, “This morning we left our company Captain Richards for to travel faster and go though to the valley [Salt Lake] sooner. We have formed some very good acquaintances and it was rather hard to leave for they seemed to wish us to stay but had nothing to say if we though best to leave. Capt. Richards gave me a letter of introduction to Mr. Brigham Young for our benefit.”
The letter read:
Independence Rock Sept 24/49
To B. Young and all whom it may concern we cheerfully recommend Capt. Rathbun and his company to the inhabitants and authorities in the G.S.L.V.J.C. as men of honour and integrity. They have traveled with us from Loup fork or near there and we have known them to sustain the above recommendation. They now leave us as they wish to go faster than we are able to go in order to complete their journey to California.
Silas Richards
Capt. of Fifty
Hwy 220 meets Hwy 287 just past Devil’s Gate and I head north toward Lander WY. Near Jeffrey City the Oregon Trail heads west following the Sweetwater, but the highway continues northwest to Lander. Again the landscape captures ones attention.
Lander, located on the Popo Agie River at the southern border of the Wind River Indian Reservation, is 6867 feet above sea level. I am beginning to feel the affects of the high altitude and look forward to a quiet evening in my room that overlooks the Popo Agie. Bedtime reading informed me that farther north on Hwy 287, near Dubois, George Packer, better known as Butch Cassidy, operated a horse ranch. Cassidy brought his stock to Lander to sell, and the story was that he always had more stock to sell than he raised.
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