Rifle Pit Hill

The quarry crews the pits guarded were after lime as much as stone. In 1849, the Army's first summer at Fort Laramie, the emigrant Amos Batchelder found soldiers near Warm Springs, over the ridge to the south, cutting wood and preparing to burn lime for the fort. Heated limestone yields quicklime, an ingredient of cement, and the spring was sometimes called Lime Kiln Spring for it. Before long the kiln moved about two miles north to Cold Springs, below the five shallow pits on this crest.

What the plaque says

Rifle Pit Hill Rock quarries, visible from several points near this location, were used beginning in 1849 to supply stone and lime for construction projects at Fort Laramie, about 15-miles east. Workers in the quarries were protected by soldiers stationed in fortified rifle pits dug into the crest of the low hill to the northeast. Five such rifle pits, eighteen to twenty four inches deep, form a well arranged defense perimeter. The rifle pits also overlook the Cold Spring campground, a popular camping and watering place on the Oregon-California Trail (1841-1868). Another major campground, known as Warm Spring is located on the far side of the ridge to the south. Such springs were vital to emigrants traveling west. The North Platte River, running high and muddy with Rocky Mountain snowmelt, was not fit to drink for man or beast during the time of year the annual emigration passed this way. A still visible branch of the Oregon Trail is located about 500 feet north of Cold Spring. Other major emigrant trail landmarks in the immediate area include the Oregon Trail Ruts National Historic Site, Register Cliff State Historic Site and a scattering of marked pioneer graves. The Oregon Trail Ruts, where wagon wheel tracks are worn up to five feet deep in a soft sandstone ridge, are the signature trail ruts of the entire Oregon-California-Mormon Trail system. At Register Cliff, passing pioneers carved their signatures, hometown names and the date of their passage into the face of a mile-long bluff beside the North Platte River. Both places present strong visual evidence of the 500,000 westering pioneers who passed this way on their epic journey to Columbia River farmlands, California gold fields and the religious freedom of the Great Salt Lake valley. Access to all sites is well marked in the town of Guernsey.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site — 2.2 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.
• Register Cliff State Historic Site — 4.3 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 — 13 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

• The Oregon Trail — steps away
• Oregon Trail Ruts — 2.3 mi
• Oregon Trail Ruts — 2.3 mi
• Oregon Trail Memorial — 2.5 mi