Sweetwater to South Pass

After crossing the Platte River near Fort Casper, the Oregon Trail pioneers faced the steepest, roughest, driest and most dangerous stretches of the Trail.  Tim and I wondered, too, if the highway we meant to follow would be accessible for our RV, the Dawntreader. 

Notice the cutoffs after South Pass

When I mapped out our route six months ago, I checked Rand McNally’s Motor Carriers’ Road Atlas, an atlas that highlights trucker routes (those with no low-hanging bridges) in yellow, and thought we could go this way.  But now, looking at it again and seeing the towns few and far between, I worried about what might happen if the Dawntreader failed us.  Would we, too, be forced to walk until we could find help?

Luckily, my fears did not faze Tim; he intrepidly turned west and we found the highway to be a good, though lightly travelled, road.

As we drove through the sage-covered territory, my job as navigator was to watch for the marker indicating the turnoff for Independence Rock, so named because trail tradition held that reaching this milestone by the Fourth of July meant the emigrants would arrive safely in Oregon before early blizzards blew. 

I almost missed it.  I wasn’t expecting it to be at a rest stop, but upon reflection, what could be more fitting than for the highway crew to construct a rest stop in the same place the pioneers stopped. 

Dwarfed by the hills to the west of it, Independence Rock looks like a great stone turtle and marks the beginning of the 100-mile climb up the Sweetwater Valley to South Pass.  

Just as they did on Register Cliff, many pioneers left their names carved or painted with tar on the face of Independence Rock, too.

“Thousands of names are engraved and painted by all colors of paint.  I can compare it to nothing so [much] as an irregular loaf of bread raised very light & cracked & creased in all ways.”  Daniel Budd, date unknown

“Names! Names!  Are everywhere upon its surface to be seen.  Names of the young & the old, of the man & his gentle mate, of the learned traveler & the yellow ideaed gold hunter.”  Charles B. Darwin, 1849

Independence Rock by William Henry Jackson

Indeed, I should have recognized the rock from Abigail Scott’s description in her diary, dated June 29, 1852:

“We came twenty miles.  The water (of Sweetwater River) is clear and palatable but is warmer during the day than the water of the Platte.  Independence Rock is an immense mass covering an area of, I think about ten acres, and is about three hundred feet high.  My sisters and I went to the base of the rock with the intention of climbing it but we had only ascended about thirty feet when a heavy hail and windstorm arose obliging us to desist.  Immediately after leaving Independence rock we came in sight of the well-known Devil’s Gate five miles ahead of us…”

Climbing the rock seems to be an irresistible challenge to the young, irrespective of the passage of centuries.  I watched a family of teenagers scale it to the top.  If you look closely at the photo above, you may see them.

Devil’s Gate is clearly visible from the Independence Rock.  It’s a 370-foot high, 1,500-foot long fissure chiseled over the centuries by the Sweetwater River, a river that earned its name for its taste.  French-speaking trappers in the early 1800s called the river “Eau Sucree,” meaning ‘sugar water.’  Emigrants also noted its sweetness, a welcome contrast to the alkaline streams they had encountered to the east.

“Who can gaze on the Sweetwater’s passage through the mountains (called Devil’s Gate) without feelings of the livest emotions?  It is grand, it is sublime!  Fifty feet of a chasm having perpendicular walls three hundred feet high yawning over the gulf below.  He must be brainless that can see this unmoved.  Here memory will dwell.”  John Edwin Banks, 1849

We were unable to get close to Devil’s Gate--it’s now a museum run by the Mormons--but the highway pull-out had placards worth stopping to see.

Our plans called for spending the night at Twin Pines RV Park about seven miles south of Lander.  When we checked in, the owner mentioned several local sites to see.  

We were intrigued by her description of the natural phenomenon within Sinks Canyon State Park.  There the Popo Agie, a rushing river, flows out of the Wind River Mountains and through the canyon.  

Halfway down the canyon, the river abruptly turns into a large limestone cavern, and the crashing water “sinks” into fissures and cracks at the back of the cave.  The river is underground for a quarter mile until it emerges down the canyon in a large calm pool called “The Rise” which is filled with huge trout.  

The Rise

It's hard to see, but those bubbles in the lower left photo are the river as it rises.  The river then continues its course into the valley below.  

Hiking through Sinks Canyon

We found the canyon interesting not only for its geological wonder, but also for its great hiking trails.

One of our challenges on the road, not faced by the pioneers, is finding access to the Internet.  This was especially troublesome at Twin Pines RV Resort where not even our 3G phones could find service in the desolate territory of central Wyoming.  So I typed rough drafts for several blog posts using a word processing program on our laptop; then, we stopped at McDonalds in Lander so I could use their free Internet wifi to upload them.  Problem solved!

Leaving Twin Pines the next morning, we planned to stop at South Pass City, a historical mining district and now a Wyoming State Historic Site.  However, when we turned onto the marked gravel road, we had serious misgivings about the wisdom of this detour.  After traveling a couple miles, Tim determined that this side jaunt was not necessary so he pulled the Dawntreader into a wide spot on the road and we made a very scary U-turn.  

Returning to the highway, we found South Pass (elevation 7,411 feet), a nearly imperceptible hill that straddles the Continental Divide only a few miles ahead.  West of here, the pioneers would have a parting of the ways and head off in differing directions, on differing trails, to their final destination and fortune.

“After getting fairly on the top level of the Pass we halted, to gaze for the last time on the eastern hills and valleys of the Atlantic slope…I was soon brought to ‘a sense of my situation’ by three lusty cheers, given as a sort of adieu to our friends before descending into the valley of the Pacific.”  William Kelly

Not to be outdone, Tim and I echoed their cheers as we, too, drove down the pass.