Oregon Trail Ruts

The panel credits Bill Sublette with the first wheels, and his partners' own report bears it out. On April 10, 1830, Sublette left St. Louis with ten wagons drawn by five mules each, two one-mule dearborns, twelve cattle and a milk cow, and reached the rendezvous on the Wind River on July 16. Smith, Jackson and Sublette told the Secretary of War it was the first time wagons had gone to the Rocky Mountains, proof of an easy road to the Pacific. The ten wagons went home loaded with furs; the dearborns stayed behind.

What the plaque says

Oregon Trail Ruts Registered National Historic Landmark Wagon wheels cut solid rock, carving a memorial to Empire Builders. What manner of men and beasts impelled conveyances weighing on those grinding wheels? Look! A line of shadows crossing boundless wilderness. Foremost, nimble mules drawing their carts, come poised Mountain Men carrying trade goods to a fur fair -- the Rendezvous. So, in 1830, Bill Sublette turns the first wheels from St. Louis to the Rocky Mountains! Following his faint trail, a decade later and on through the 1860's, appear straining, twisting teams of oxen, mules and heavy draft horses drawing Conestoga wagons for Oregon pioneers. Trailing the Oregon-bound avant garde but otherwise mingling with those emigrants, inspired by religious fervor, loom footsore and trail worn companies -- Mormons dragging or pushing handcarts as they follow Brigham Young to the Valley of the Salt Lake. And, after 1849, reacting to a different stimulus but sharing the same trail, urging draft animals to extremity, straining resources and often failing, hurry gold rushers California bound. A different breed, no emigrants but enterprisers and adventurers, capture the 1860's scene. They appear, multi-teamed units in draft -- heavy wagons in tandem, jerkline operators and bullwhackers delivering freight to Indian War outposts and agencies. Now the apparition fades in a changing environment. Dimly seen, this last commerce serves a new, pastoral society; the era of the cattle baron and the advent of settlement blot the Oregon Trail.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site — steps away
  The clearest wagon ruts on the trail, worn by iron tires and cut deeper by travelers who hacked at the ledge to get their wagons over.
• Register Cliff State Historic Site — 2.0 mi
  The first camp out of Fort Laramie, where the oldest date on the rock reads 1829 and three emigrants never left.
• Fort Laramie National Historic Site — 10 mi
  Old Bedlam, the officers' quarters of 1849, survived the auction that scattered the rest of the post; an 1875 Army bridge still crosses the river.

More markers nearby

• Oregon Trail Ruts — steps away
• Pony Express Station — 1.7 mi
• Register Cliff — 2.0 mi
• Oregon Trail Memorial — 2.0 mi