In July 1844 the California-bound Stevens-Townsend-Murphy wagon train, guided by Isaac Hitchcock and 81-year-old Caleb Greenwood, passed this point and continued nine and one-half miles southwest to the starting point of the Sublette Cut-off, where, instead of following the regular Oregon Trail route southwest to Fort Bridger and then northwest to reach the Bear River below present-day Cokeville, Wyoming, the train pioneered a new route. Either Hitchcock or Greenwood, though it is uncertain which, decided to lead the wagons due west, effectively along one side of a triangle. The route was hazardous, requiring a crossing of about 50 miles of semi-arid desert in the heat of summer and the surmounting of mountain ridges, but it saved approximately 85 miles and 5 or 6 days of travel compared with the Fort Bridger route. First known as the Greenwood Cut-off, the route gained prominence in the Gold Rush year of 1849, when of an estimated 30,000 Forty-niners, probably 20,000 traveled it. Because of an error in the 1849 Joseph E. Ware guidebook, the Greenwood Cut-off became known as the Sublette Cut-off. In the years that followed, further refinements of the trail route were made. In 1852 the Kinney and Slate Creek Cut-offs diverted wagon trains from portions of the Sublette Cut-off, but until the covered wagon period ended, the Sublette Cut-off remained a popular direct route, and this place was the site of crucial decisions.