Sublette Cutoff (1844 and 1849)
Shortcut on Oregon-California Trails
Contributed by Steve F. Russell
The Sublette Cutoff was pioneered in 1844 by the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party. Their captain was Elisha Stephens, a mountain man and beaver trapper. Their guide was mountain man Caleb Greenwood. John Townsend was a physician that would become one of the first in California. Martin Murphy was an Irish Catholic taking his family to California for new opportunities and religious freedom.
Oddly enough, it was Isaac Hitchcock, a trapper and trader, who likely led the party westward over what would become known as the Sublette Cutoff. This trail has also been called the Sublette-Greenwood Cutoff. As was usually the case, this route evolved, with some minor changes, on the eastern 85% of the route, but the Smith’s Fork alternate was being used when J. Goldsborough Bruff traveled the cutoff in 1849.
One of the oddities of the trail is that there were actually two locations for the “Parting of the Ways” trail junction. The first, in 1844–1845, was documented in the 1845 journal of Joel Palmer as being just to the west of the Big Sandy River crossing. The second, and more commonly known junction was 3.9 miles east of the first one. The need for the change was dictated by a change in the route of the main Oregon Trail going to Fort Bridger.
The Need for a Cutoff
The Oregon Trail route through Fort Bridger was 180.3 topographic miles, as traveled by John Fremont in 1842–43. It had good water and acceptable livestock feed, but travelers to Oregon and California wanted a shorter route in western Wyoming. That shorter route was the Sublette Cutoff. Its length was 111.6 topographic miles, a savings of 68.7 topographic miles. This would translate into a savings of 4–5 days given normal traveling conditions. However, there was a shortage of water over the eastern part of the cutoff.
The distance between the Big Sandy and Green Rivers was 40.5 topographic miles. This meant that there might be no water available for livestock for a travel time of 2–3 days except for what might be carried on the wagons. The other alternative was driving wagons continuously over the 40 mile “desert.” This translated into a travel time of 15–25 hours depending on how intensely the livestock was driven. Although this amount of time, without water was serious, the travelers learned to cope with it.
The route became more popular after the California Gold rush started. Those who used the Hudspeth Cutoff, reduced their mileage even further. When the Hastings Cutoff and Salt Lake Alternates started to be used, traffic on the Sublette Cutoff decreased. This was even more true when the Mormon Pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley started providing resupplies. The resupply locations of Fort Hall and Fort Bridger declined significantly.
This researcher has not been able to substantiate the number and locations of the ferries crossing the Green River in the area of the cutoff, but there was a cable ferry across the river about 0.9 miles north where the cutoff crossed. This was likely the Mormon Ferry. There was likely another ferry at the location were the cutoff crossed the Green River.