11 Most Endangered Historic Places
South Pass
Year Listed: 1995
Location: South Pass, Wyoming
To westbound travelers on the Oregon Trail, South Pass provided the least rigorous crossing of the awesome barrier of the Continental Divide.
Credit: Alliance for Historic Wyoming
Significance
To westbound travelers on the Oregon Trail, South Pass provided the least rigorous crossing of the awesome barrier of the Continental Divide. Original trail ruts, clearly visible more than a century after the big wagons rolled, are not the only nationally significant resources in the South Pass area: prehistoric archeological remains, Native American sacred sites and a 19th-century mining town are all nearby. But a proposed natural gas pipeline set to cut through the landscape, requiring rock blasting and trenching, would cause extensive and irreparable damage.
