In July 1844 the California bound Stevens-Townsend-Murphy wagon train, guided by Isaac Hitchcock and 81-year old Caleb Greenwood, passed this point and continued nine and one half miles southwest from here, to a place destined to become prominent in Oregon Trail history - the starting point of the Sublette Cut-off.
There, instead of following the regular Oregon Trail route southwest to Fort Bridger, then northwest to reach the Bear River below present day Cokeville, Wyoming, this wagon train pioneered a new route. Either Hitchcock or Greenwood, it is uncertain which, made the decision to lead the wagons due west, in effect along one side of a triangle.
The route was hazardous, entailing crossing some 50 miles of semi-arid desert in the heat of summer and surmounting mountain ridges, but it saved approximately 85 miles from the Fort Bridger route and 5 or 6 days of travel. The route was first known as the Greenwood Cut-off.
It was the Gold Rush year of 1849 that brought this "Parting of the Ways" into prominence. Of the estimated 30,000 Forty-niners probably 20,000 travelled the Greenwood Cut-off which, due to an error in the 1849 Joseph E. Ware guide book, became known as the Sublette Cut-off.
In the ensuing years further refinements of the Trail route were made. In 1852 the Kinney and Slate Creek Cut-offs diverted trains from portions of the Sublette Cut-off, but until the covered wagon period ended, the Sublette Cut-off remained a popular direct route, and this "Parting of the Ways" was the place for crucial decisions.
A quartzite post inscribed ←Fort Bridger S. Cut-off→ and a Bureau of Land Management information panel now mark the historic "Parting of the Ways" site.
Comments 0 comments