The historic Oregon Trail descended from the benchlands across the valley to the river bottom below, and Brigham Young’s 1847 Company of Mormon Pioneers crossed the south side of the North Platte River near Fort Laramie to follow the trail past this point. West of Fort Laramie, the route followed a line of bluffs before dropping to the river bottom at the steep, rocky descent known as Mexican Hill, where emigrants locked their wagon wheels to keep the wagons from running away or rolling into the ox teams. William Clayton called it a steep, rocky, dangerous but short descent, and journals from 1847 recount ropes fastened to the rear of wagons and men holding them back as the party made its way safely to the bottom near the river. The name Mexican Hill came from a group of Mexican settlers living along the river plain below, who in the early 1840s built an irrigation system on the river flats to water vegetable gardens and often traded produce with emigrants and soldiers passing through the area. After the descent, the route opened briefly before the river forced travelers back toward the cliffs, and diaries from the 1840s and 1850s recall the determination of pioneer families who pushed and pulled their wagons and belongings along this rocky road to begin new lives on the American frontier.