Along the Oregon Trail, the famed transcontinental route of the 19th century, inscriptions of names and dates on prominent landmarks survive from the 1820's through the 1860's, though many marks of historic value were later effaced. Wyoming had three outstanding recording areas: Register Cliff, Independence Rock 180 miles west, and Names Hill another 175 miles farther along the Trail. Register Cliff drew emigrants because its broad river bottoms provided pleasing campsites and excellent pasture. Trail travel brought inevitable hardship and illness, and of 55,000 emigrants in peak years, about 5,000 died enroute, with cliffside graves bearing witness to the high mortality. Because travelers greatly valued chances to rest and recover, they used such layovers here to inscribe their names. Some of the earliest inscriptions, however, were left not by weary emigrants but by Mountain Men accustomed to wilderness life, many descended from two centuries of French Fur Trade, including one reading, "1829 This July 14," which raises the possibility that French trappers noted Bastille Day here in 1829.