Another Letter Supporting South Pass

Good day everyone.

With the Lander BLM Field Office soon to release their proposed Resource Management Plan, I would like to voice the following as far as protecting the Greater South Pass Historic Landscape Area:

As we are all aware, during the mid-nineteenth century Wyoming’s South Pass was the only feasible passageway for hundreds of thousands of pioneers to all points west. Their diaries and journals are replete of perseverance, hope and hardship. It was a major conduit to the American Dream.

To this day there are still timeless, unspoiled wagon ruts with pristine viewsheds and it is all here in our own backyard to preserve for future generations. I believe we have reached a critical and defining moment for safeguarding the South Pass Historic Trails corridor.

Over the years my own personal experiences along the Sweetwater River Valley have been filled with wonderment. To walk in wagon ruts a hundred plus years old with unrivaled landform panoramas and without wind turbines, massive transmission lines, etc. gives one the sense of solitude and connection to the past.

To view emigrant inscriptions at Independence Rock, behold the anomaly of Devil’s Gate, stop at Split Rock or Ice Slough and feel the presence of early-day fur trappers and later the thousands of white covered wagons with the pioneers and their livestock slowly making their way west, to the sixth through ninth crossings of the Sweetwater River, and finally to stand at Ezra Meeker’s Oregon Trail Stone Marker at South Pass, one quickly gains a regard for this remote and extremely historic area.

Just as this one hundred mile corridor to South Pass joined east to west in the 1800’s, so too it must connect our past generations to future generations without unsightly intrusions. This is a time piece we should not slip away.

In summary, I deem it would be an embarrassment to our children and their children to exploit this most historic of all trails corridor.
“We walk in yesterday’s footprints just as future generations will walk in ours.”
Let’s make all generations proud.

Please consider supporting the Resource Protection Alternative.

Thank you.

William J. Higgins, III