Sheep Rock rises 1200 feet above the Bear River and served as a prominent landmark for travelers moving west on the Oregon and California trails. Trappers and mountain men in the early 1830s reported that a sizable flock of bighorn mountain sheep occupied its forested, rocky ridge throughout the year. Modern-day maps identified this feature as Soda Point, the northern end of the Wasatch Mountain Range that tower above the Great Salt Lake Valley. The Bear River flows north out of Utah's Uinta Mountains into southwestern Wyoming, then continues toward Soda Point before turning south and flowing back into Utah and into the Great Salt Lake. Its relatively level valleys gave Oregon- and California-bound emigrants a good road surface as they traveled toward the Hudson's Bay Company trading post at Fort Hall. A short distance west from Soda Springs, the trail divides, with Oregon-bound wagons heading northwest to Fort Hall and California-bound travelers turning west along the Hudspeth Cutoff toward the Humboldt River in northern Nevada. In early August 1841, thirty-nine members of the Bidwell-Bartleson wagon party followed the Bear south to the Great Salt Lake before turning west through the desert to connect with the Humboldt, and they were finally forced to abandon their wagons in Utah's west desert. Four months later, all 39 members, tired and starving, finally reached California.