On the prairie, wagons on the Oregon Trail often spread out to avoid dust, but at Mitchell Pass emigrants faced a narrow bottleneck where wagons had to pass through ravines in single file. The repeated clomping, scraping, and grinding of thousands of hooves and wagon wheels gradually cut deep ruts into the soft sandstone, and more than a century later traces of those ruts still remain. From here, the route to the right follows the historic Oregon Trail for half a mile. At Scotts Bluff on August 13, 1860, British traveler and author Richard F. Burton wrote that sudden torrents and strong winds had carved the ground into a labyrinth of steep-walled jagged gulches, and that travelers dashed through the drains and pitch-holes with such violence that the navebands were shaken from their sturdy wheels. A few emigrants also carved their names on the base of the bluffs, though erosion has worn away most of the signatures.