Bitter Creek and the Overland Trail
Near Rock Springs, Wyoming
The stream that winds through the center of Rock Springs is called Bitter Creek, and the name tells you everything about this landscape. The water tastes of minerals and alkali. Animals avoided it when they could find anything better. Emigrants crossing the Wyoming Basin on the Overland Trail in the eighteen fifties and eighteen sixties could not always find anything better.
The Overland Trail was the southern variant of the emigrant road west, swinging below the main Oregon Trail to avoid the worst of the Sioux and Cheyenne conflicts of the eighteen sixties. It ran directly through this basin, following Bitter Creek for miles. Stagecoach stations were established here to service the Overland Mail, and the creek crossing became a regular stop. When the Union Pacific built through in the late eighteen sixties, the railroad ran along much the same corridor the wagons had worn. The rails replaced the ruts, and Rock Springs grew up at the junction of water, coal, and a road that people had already been using for twenty years.
