Hudspeth's Cutoff

What Hudspeth thought and what he got can be measured. The road by Fort Hall to the Raft River ran about 134 miles; his cutoff, opened with the mountain man John Myers and a company of some seventy wagons, ran about 113 and crossed four ridges with little water. Travelers saved perhaps 21 to 25 miles and no time. They took it anyway: from late June to the end of August 1849 an estimated 250 wagons a day turned west here, and about 45,000 people used it in 1850, the year Hudspeth himself died in California.

What the plaque says

Hudspeth's Cutoff In the summer of 1849, the California gold rush was diverted this way in search of a more direct route to the mines. Stampeding 49'ers would try anything to save miles and time in their rush for California gold: the regular Oregon and California trails looped north of here to Fort Hall, but on July 19, 1849 Benoni M. Hudspeth led a party west from Soda Springs through rough country hoping for a more direct route through a gap 1.4 miles south of here. This immediately became the main road, though it saved far less than Hudspeth thought. 161 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lava Hot Springs — 5.0 mi
  The pools belong to the state because the springs left the Fort Hall Reservation and Congress handed them to Idaho in 1902.
• Black Canyon of the Bear River — 9.2 mi
  A basalt gorge cut by a river that, most of the year, now runs past it in a pipe.
• Soda Springs Geyser — 16 mi
  Drillers looking for hot water for a swimming pool hit cold soda water under pressure. The town put the geyser on a timer.

More markers nearby

• Chesterfield — 2.4 mi
• Lava Hot Springs — 4.6 mi
• Bear River Lava — 11 mi
• John Bidwell — 11 mi