Richard Braden

South Pass Richard Braden

In the entire Rocky Mountain intermountain region there is no place that was more traveled in the nineteenth century than the famed 'South Pass', a fortuitous spot along the American continental divide in west-central Wyoming. There people and animals could scurry like ants across the crest of the foreboding Rocky Mountains, and live to tell about it. It was as if the Creator, having surveyed His work in this part of the world, pressed a thumb into the landscape to provide a place for simple farmers, immigrants, and some ne'er-do-wells to pass through on their way to the promised land in the far west. It was on the west side of the South Pass that the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, having existed side-by-side for over 1100 miles, now diverged. The Mormons and the California Forty-niners headed southwest as soon as they cleared the pass; the people bound for Oregon and Washington headed northwest at the same juncture. It was at this pass that a rockhound named Charley Grissom met the Cecil McGowan family, and all of their lives were changed forever.