The City of Rocks National Reserve, also known as the Silent City of Rocks, is a United States National Reserve and state park lying 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the south central Idaho border with Utah.
California Trail wagon trains of the 1840s and 1850s left the Raft River valley and traveled through the area and over Granite Pass into Nevada. Names or initials of emigrants written in axle grease are still visible on Register Rock. Ruts from wagon wheels also can be seen in some of the rocks.
In 1849, an emigrant party with James Wilkins "encamped at the city of the rocks" on the California Trail just north of the Great Salt Lake Desert. Signatures in axle grease on rock faces can be seen today. One emigrant[who?] saw the distant rocks in August like "water thrown up into the air from numerous artificial hydrants." Beginning in 1843, City of Rocks was a landmark for emigrants on the California Trail and Salt Lake Alternate Trail[3] and later on freight routes and the Kelton, Utah to Boise, Idaho stage route.
The area's historical and geological values, scenery, and opportunities for recreation led to its designation as City of Rocks National Reserve in 1988. This unit of the National Park System is managed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.
Early emigrant groups were guided by experienced mountain men such as Joseph B. Chiles and Joseph R. Walker. Later wagon parties followed the trails themselves, perhaps with the help of diary accounts of previous emigrants. The City of Rocks marked progress west for the emigrants and, for their loaded wagons, a mountain passage over nearby Granite Pass.[4] By 1846, emigrants headed for Oregon's Willamette Valley also used this route as part of the Applegate Trail. In 1848 Samuel J. Hensley[3]:b[5] pioneered the Salt Lake Alternate Trail from Salt Lake City via Emigrant Canyon[6] to Granite Pass. In 1852, some 52,000 people passed through the City of Rocks on their way to the California goldfields.
When the trails opened in the 1840s, Granite Pass was in Mexico and less than a mile from Oregon Territory. After 1850 the Pass became part of Utah Territory,[7] and in 1872 an Idaho-Utah boundary survey error
placed Granite Pass in Idaho Territory. With completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the overland wagon routes began to pass into history. However, wagons saw continued use on regional supply routes that spread out from the railroad lines.
John Halley's stage route connected the railroad at Kelton, Utah, with Idaho's mining hub of Boise, Idaho, and supplied the early economic development of Idaho, which won statehood in 1890. The Kelton stage route passed through the City of Rocks, with a stage station set up near the junction of the old California Trail and the Salt Lake Alternate. Settlers began to homestead the City of Rocks area in the late 19th century. Dryland farming declined during the drought years of the 1920s and 1930s, but ranching survived. Livestock grazing began with early wagon use of the area in the mid-19th century and continues today.
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