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4 unusual facts about Fort Bridger


3rd Regiment California Volunteer Infantry

During the month of December it was moved to Benicia Barracks, where it remained until the summer of 1862, when it went to Fort Bridger, Wyoming (then part of Utah), remaining there until August, 1864, when it marched to Camp Douglas, where it was disbanded by consolidation, November 1, 1864.

Fort Bridger

In 1845, Lanford Hastings published a guide entitled The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California, which advised California emigrants to leave the Oregon Trail, at Fort Bridger, pass through the Wasatch Range, across the Great Salt Lake Desert, an 80-mile waterless drive, loop around the Ruby Mountains, and rejoin the California Trail about seven miles west of modern Elko (also Emigrant Pass).

Daguerreotypist John Wesley Jones visited the garrison in 1851 and Samuel C. Mills, traveling with the Army bound for Utah, produced at least one image of Fort Bridger in 1858.

Mountain View, Wyoming

Mountain View was founded in 1891, and is located near Fort Bridger.


Cherokee Trail

There the trail turned west near present day Tie Siding, and proceeded along the Colorado/Wyoming border to Green River and to Fort Bridger where it struck the other emigrant trails.

Howard Stansbury

Rather than follow the standard Oregon Trail route from Fort Bridger over South Pass through the Sweetwater River valley, Stansbury wanted to scout a more direct route east.

Louis Vasquez

By 1843 they had built Fort Bridger on Blacks Fork of the Green River, which became as much an emigrant station as trading post.

Samuel C. Mills

After arriving at Camp Floyd, Mills accompanied Simpson's detachment in surveying a new road to Fort Bridger up Provo Canyon.


see also

Overland Trail

In 1851 U.S. Army Topographical Engineer Captain Howard Stansbury returning east from an expedition to the Salt Lake Valley described a route from Fort Bridger via the Bitter Creek valley and Laramie Plains to the North Platte River.