Names Hill is one of three prominent Wyoming sites where travelers inscribed their names into stone along the emigrant trails, along with Register Cliff and Independence Rock. After crossing a 40 miles stretch of waterless desert, wagon trains stopped and camped near the Green River crossing, where travelers had an opportunity to carve their names into the soft limestone. Names Hill lies along the Sublette-Greenwood Cutoff, a shortcut that ran due west from the Little Sandy River and bypassed part of the main emigrant trail and Fort Bridger, and its popularity increased in the late 1840s as people became more willing to risk crossing the desert to save about 46 miles of travel. Historians believe the earliest writings at Names Hill were made by mountain men crossing the Green River on their way to trap beaver in the Rocky Mountains, and these inscriptions date to 1822, making them the oldest pioneer inscriptions in Wyoming. The names of J.J. Shay from 1825 and Twig from 1832 testify to these early explorers. One of the most famous inscriptions is that of mountain man Jim Bridger, left in 1844, though historians dispute whether he wrote it himself because he reportedly did not know how to read or write; some believe he may have known enough to sign his own name, while others believe a traveling companion inscribed it for him. Names Hill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.