The Lander Cutoff of the Oregon Trail
Wyoming
This monument honors the pioneers of the Oregon Trail, and out here in the Big Sandy country it marks a special branch of that great migration, the Lander Cutoff.
In eighteen fifty-eight, Frederick Lander improved an old path used by Native peoples and mountain men into a wagon road, one of the first federally funded road projects in the West. It offered emigrants real water and timber and cut nearly seven days off the older route through Fort Bridger.
In its first season, thousands of emigrants rolled across this trail bound for Oregon and beyond. Travelers on the main trail forded Big Sandy Creek near here before the long dry stretches ahead. Stand here in the sagebrush and you can still trace the ruts those wagons carved into the high desert on their way west.
