oregon trail

Fort Bernard undercut Fort John’s prices by up to 40% in 1845–46, until a fire destroyed it within two years. Visited by Francis Parkman and the Donner Party, it captures a fierce, short-lived challenge to the American Fur Company’s monopoly on the North Platte.

For twelve years, John Baptiste Richard’s toll bridge and trading post near present-day Evansville was the upper North Platte’s busiest crossing, hosting emigrants, soldiers, and the Pony Express. Known to travelers as “Reshaw’s Bridge,” it gave way to Fort Caspar in 1865.

Built in 1841 to challenge the American Fur Company, Lancaster Lupton’s Fort Platte sparked a fierce three-year rivalry with Fort John. Bankrupt by 1842, it passed through four owners before being abandoned in 1845. Not even an adobe brick remains today.

Built in 1841 to outshine its decaying predecessor Fort William, adobe Fort John became the busiest trading post on the North Platte, the “Fort Laramie” thousands of emigrants passed through. The Army bought it in 1849, launching one of the West’s great military posts.

Built in 1834 at the Laramie-Platte confluence, Fort William was Wyoming’s first permanent trading post, precursor to Fort John and Fort Laramie. Champagne christened its name after a dispute among its builders. Its exact location remains unknown despite decades of archaeological searching.

Attracting tens of thousands of visitors annually, the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center opened in Casper in August 2002. Keeping history and memory alive, the center also serves school groups and offers interpretive exhibits, guest speakers, re-enactors and special events targeting people of all ages and interests.

On a remote sagebrush flat in the Red Desert in northern Sweetwater County, Wyo., four flagpoles and a stone monument mark the intersection of what once were the Louisiana Purchase, the Oregon Country and Mexico. Nothing much ever happened there—but the site remains a linchpin of the American West.

Alfred Corum, bound for California in 1849 with two dozen other Missouri men, died on July 4 on the Sublette Cutoff in present western Wyoming. His brother and five other men stayed behind to bury him, deeply saddened on what otherwise would have been a day of celebration. 

On the Oregon-California Trail in western Wyoming lies the grave of 20-year-old Nancy Hill, who died of cholera while bound for California in 1852. The gravestone, though old, is not original and part of the inscription—“Killed by Indians—” for many years misled locals about the cause of her death.

Emigrant Spring, west of the Green River on the Slate Creek Cutoff of the Oregon Trail, offered pioneer travelers cold, clear water, plentiful grass for their livestock and plenty of sagebrush for their cooking fires. And the sandstone bluffs above the spring made a natural bulletin board where thousands carved their names.