Pilot Butte, about 25 miles south, was an important landmark that guided travelers by separating the South Pass trails from the more southerly Overland Trail across southern Wyoming. It was oddly more important to eastbound travelers than to westbound emigrants. The name appeared on fur trade maps by at least 1837, and on September 12, 1850, Captain Howard Stansbury mentioned it as his column of topographic engineers traveled east from Fort Bridger guided by Jim Bridger, calling it a landmark well known to traders on the eastern side of the Green River. Its importance grew as eastward traffic increased in the 1850s, especially in 1862 when Ben Holladay shifted his stagecoach and freighting operations from the Oregon Trail south to the Overland route. Sitting atop White Mountain just north of the original location of the Rock Springs airport, Pilot Butte later also served as a landmark for early pilots flying the nation’s first airmail routes.