Trail ruts at this site were mistakenly identified as the place where emigrant parties separated on their journeys to Oregon, California, or Utah, but the actual split is about 10 miles west. This location is part of the main Oregon Trail, traveled by 350,000 to 500,000 people heading west between 1844 and 1869. The uneven ridges in the ground here are ruts left by iron-wheeled freight wagons and stagecoaches on a road that connected South Pass with the Union Pacific Railroad in Green River, southwest of here. That freight road was used from about 1870 to 1900, and its ruts later caused the confusion with the actual split farther west.