Western Emigrant Trails Fording Point -- North Platte River nr Guernsey WY
N 42° 15.135 W 104° 44.026
13T E 521961 N 4677818
Where Oregon, Mormon, and California Trail pioneers forded the North Platte River near Guernsey WY on their respective journeys to the US Western frontier can be seen from space!!!!
Waymark Code: WMK2ZE
Location: Wyoming, United States
Date Posted: 02/05/2014
Views: 3
Blasterz are huge honking history geeks. Mama Blaster especially loves all things related to the Oregon Trail. It is beyond awesome that nearly 150 years after the last emigrant wagon trains rolled along the Oregon, California, and Mormon Pioneer Trails, you can still see where these brave men and women forded the North Platte River near Guernsey WY. It's even cooler that you can see it FROM SPACE!
Three major fords can be seen along the North Platte, whose broad expanse, sandy bottom, deep quicksand, shifting sandbars and fast-rushing currents were always dangerous.
From the Wyoming Tales and Trails website: (
visit link)
"To avoid the tolls levied by the proprietors of the bridges or ferries, many emigrants attempted to ford the Platte. This was not without danger or peril. Col. William Thompson in his 1912 Reminisences of a Pioneer wrote of crossing the Platte in 1852:
At Fort Laramie we crossed the Platte river by fording. The stream, as I remember it, was near a mile wide, but not waist deep. Thirty and forty oxen were hitched to one wagon, to effect the crossing. But woe to the hapless team that stalled in the treacherous quicksands. They must be kept going, as it required but a short stop for the treacherous sands to engulf team and wagon alike. Men wading on either side of the string of oxen kept them moving, and soon all were safely on the north side of the Platte river."
The river ford near Guernsey is near Register Cliff, where many emigrants left their mark in the soft sandstone.
We do not have any photos of the actual river ford, as it is on private land and we did not have the owner;s permission to enter. However, the fords and the trails leading to the famous Guernsey Trail Ruts are clearly seen on satellite.