Emigrants heading west on the California Trail probably fanned out as they crossed this basin and converged again at Pinnacle Pass, a gap in the rocks that provided the westbound exit from the City of Rocks. They often did not travel in single-file lines, because fanning out helped avoid dust from those ahead, and most would have walked rather than ridden in the wagons. More than one traveler described Pinnacle Pass as narrow and rugged. In 1849, J. Goldsborough Bruff called it a very narrow pass, just wide enough for a wagon, with very high, jagged, thin walls of granite on either side. In later years, teamsters used cables to ease heavy freight wagons down the far side, and in the twentieth century road builders avoided the pass by dynamiting an easier route farther to the right for the present-day road.