Fort Bridger

Fort Bridger was originally a 19th-century fur trading outpost established in 1842 on Blacks Fork of the Green River and later a vital resupply point for wagon trains on the Oregon Trail, California Trail and Mormon Trail. The Army established a military post here in 1858 during the Utah War until it was finally closed in 1890. A small town, Fort Bridger, Wyoming, remains near the fort and takes its name from it.

Bridger's Trading Post

The post was established by the mountain man Jim Bridger, after whom it is named, and Louis Vasquez.

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). The ill-fated Donner Party followed that route, along which they were met by a rider sent by Hastings to deliver letters to traveling emigrants. On July 12, the Reeds and Donners were given one of these letters, in which among other messages, Hastings claimed to have "worked out a new and better road to California", and said he would be waiting at Fort Bridger to guide the emigrants along the new cutoff.