Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site

Half a mile south of Guernsey, the emigrant road climbed onto a low ridge of soft sandstone rather than follow the marshy bottom of the North Platte, and the ruts it left there are the clearest on the whole trail. They are not only wear. Iron tires and hooves ground the rock down, but travelers also cut into the roughest part of the ledge to ease the wagons over, and the two together carved a channel waist- to shoulder-deep in places.

The road carried emigrants from 1841 until the Union Pacific was finished in 1869, and people here kept using stretches of it long after that. Several branches of the trail cross and part around the site, so more than one line of ruts can be traced across the ridge. Trappers, freighters and gold seekers bound for California all shared this road with the Oregon families.

The ruts were made a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and are kept as a state historic site, with a short path along the cut. Register Cliff, the trains' first camp out of Fort Laramie, is two miles east on the same road.