The Oregon Trail

The gate is a quarter mile east, as the stone says, and the wagons never went through it. The Sweetwater has cut a cleft about 370 feet deep and 1,500 feet long through the granite, some thirty feet wide at the bottom. It could do so because the ridge was once buried: the river set its course on sediments above the rock and kept cutting when it reached granite, though less than a kilometer south it could have gone around. Emigrants left the road to walk in and carve their names.

What the plaque says

The Oregon Trail 1841 Devil's Gate one-fourth mile east. Split Rock 20 miles northwest. Erected by the Historical Landmark Commission of Wyoming. 1943

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sun Ranch and Devil's Gate — steps away
  Tom Sun's 1872 cattle ranch at Devil's Gate, sold in 1996 to the church for whom the cove nearby is sacred, and the fight over who should hold that cove.
• Independence Rock State Historic Site — 5.7 mi
  A granite whaleback named before the wagons came, by trappers in 1824 or Sublette in 1830, and polished by wind until it took names easily.

More markers nearby

• The Pioneer Women — steps away
• Tom Sun Ranch — steps away