Near the Wyoming-Idaho border, pioneers on the Oregon-California Trail faced Big Hill, one of the most challenging obstacles of their journey and, in Theodore Talbot’s words in 1843, “the greatest impediment on the whole route from the United States to Fort Hall.” The dusty trail climbed the Eastern Sheep Creek Hills and descended into the Bear River Valley, and negotiating Big Hill without harm to wagons, emigrants, or livestock took a strenuous day-long effort. Margaret A. Frink recalled that in July 1850 her party started at six o’clock, forded Thomas Fork, turned west, and crossed the seven-mile stretch in five hours as the wagon’s wheels were tied fast so it could slide along the ground and, at one place, men used ropes to let it down slowly on the long, steep descent. After the difficult crossing, pioneers reached Clover Creek Encampment, a favorite camping place near present-day Montpelier, where emigrants remarked on abundant flowers, berry bushes, and mosquitoes in contrast to the dry, windswept sagebrush plains of Wyoming. Near Big Hill, Peg-Leg Smith established an early trading post in 1842 that supplied food, supplies, and horses to emigrants. Thomas Smith had acquired the nickname “Peg-Leg” in 1827 after a skirmish with Indians in which, according to accounts, he was shot in the leg, amputated it with a butcher knife, and later whittled his own wooden leg. In 1849, emigrant Amos Batchelder recorded that after crossing the valley and stream, his party encamped near Smith’s trading post, describing Smith as a fleshy, shrewd-looking man about 50 years old, as rough as the tawny customers around him, with a wife from a neighboring tribe, and identifying the country as claimed and occupied by the Shoshones, or Snake Indians, whom he considered peaceable, harmless, and generally friendly to whites.