01Summary
A broad, gentle gap through the Rocky Mountains, so gradual that many emigrants hardly noticed they had crossed the Continental Divide.
02History
South Pass is a broad gap about 20 miles wide on the Continental Divide in present-day Wyoming, at 7,412 feet. The climb is so gentle that many travelers could hardly tell where the top was. 'It seemed more like rolling prairie,' wrote Charles Gould, a forty-niner. In 1842 John C. Frémont wrote that even with Kit Carson guiding them, 'we were obliged to watch very closely to find the place at which we had reached the culminating point.'
Shoshone, Arapaho and Crow people had used the pass for centuries. A Shoshone man told Robert Stuart's Astorians about it, and on October 22, 1812, Stuart and six companions crossed it heading east. Fur trappers found it again in 1824, Captain Benjamin Bonneville took the first wagons over in 1832, and in 1836 Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding, traveling with a fur caravan, became the first white women known to cross the Continental Divide.
The Oregon, California and Mormon trails all crossed here, and in the early 1860s so did the Pony Express, stagecoaches and the first transcontinental telegraph. Gold was found nearby in 1867, and the mining town of South Pass City grew up just as the wagon era was ending.
03Today
South Pass is a National Historic Landmark. Wyoming Highway 28 crosses the divide about two miles north of the old wagon road, and a Bureau of Land Management overlook on the highway looks toward the historic pass. About 10 miles to the northeast, South Pass City State Historic Site keeps the restored cabins, hotel, jail and other buildings of the 1860s gold town. In 1869 one of its saloonkeepers, William Bright, introduced the bill that made Wyoming the first U.S. territory to give women the right to vote.
04People connected here
05Stops nearby
The Oregon Trail ran about 2,170 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City. The stops just before and after this one are below. You can also find South Pass on the interactive map.