Register Cliff

The panel's figures belong to 1850, the busiest season the trail ever had, when some 55,000 people went west. Cholera went with them up the Platte, spread through contaminated water, and killed thousands; no count is firm. The historian John Unruh put deaths across the whole emigration at about four percent, nine in ten of them from disease. Register Cliff stood a day past Fort Laramie, where the road climbed toward higher, drier country and cholera largely fell away behind the trains, which gave the panel's recuperative layovers here their point.

What the plaque says

Register Cliff The wayfarer's penchant for inscribing names and dates on prominent landmarks excites the interest of his descendants. Regretably, marks of historic value are often effaced by later opportunists. Along the Oregon Trail, famed transcontinental route of the 19th century, pertinent dates are from the 1820's through the 1860's. Three outstanding recording areas exist within Wyoming: Register Cliff here; Independence Rock 180 miles west; and Names Hill a further 175 miles along the Trail's wandering course. Register Cliff and Names Hill are self-evident titles; Independence Rock derives from a July 4th, 1825 observance which, according to some authorities, was staged by Mountain Men of Fur Trade fame. Register Cliff invited emigrants because broad river bottoms offered pleasing campsites and excellent pasture. Hardship and illness were inevitable to Trail travel; of 55,000 emigrants during a peak year some 5,000 died enroute. Cliffside graves attest to the high mortality. This being their lot, travelers eagerly sought and singularly valued recuperative lay overs. Here, rest offered the opportunity to register. But not all who registered were worn and grieving emigrants. Early inscriptions were by Mountain Men inured to wilderness life -- many descendants of two centuries of French Fur Trade. One reads: "1829 This July 14". Does it denote an observance? If the American Independence Day was celebrated in 1825 at Independence Rock could the French trappers have noted Bastille Day at Register Cliff in 1829? The National Register of Historic Places - Wyoming Place No. 36 Register Cliff

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Register Cliff State Historic Site — steps away
  The first camp out of Fort Laramie, where the oldest date on the rock reads 1829 and three emigrants never left.
• Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site — 2.0 mi
  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.
• Fort Laramie National Historic Site — 8.5 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 Memorial — steps away
• Pony Express Station — 0.3 mi
• Oregon Trail Ruts — 2.0 mi
• Oregon Trail Ruts — 2.0 mi