Buckskin Crossing of the Big Sandy River has been a campsite and river ford for hundreds if not thousands of years, part of an ancient trail system linking South Pass to the Upper Green River Valley by way of the western foothills of the Wind River Range. Robert Stuart’s Astorian party first noted it in 1812 while returning from the Pacific Coast. In the 1820s and 1830s, mountain men including Jim Bridger, Jed Smith, and William Sublette used it heavily in the beaver trade, and supply trains crossed here enroute to Rendezvous near today’s Daniel, Wyoming, bringing William Drummond Stewart, Alfred Jacob Miller, Eliza Spaulding, and Narcissa Whitman. In 1842, on his first trip exploring the West, John Charles Fremont, guided by Kit Carson, nooned here the week before climbing Fremont Peak. Frederick Lander used the crossing in 1857-1859 while surveying and building the first federally funded road, the Lander Cutoff of the Oregon Trail; his route followed the old Indian trail from South Pass, then from this point cut a new track west across the desert. With water, forage, and firewood, Buckskin Crossing became a favored campsite for tens of thousands of emigrants along the Cutoff preparing to cross the basin to the Green River. At least nine emigrant graves lie in the grassy area below, and remnants of the Lander Trail can still be seen across the river. Local legend says the crossing was named in the late 1800s for a hunter and trapper called Buckskin Joe, who lived nearby with his wife and daughter.