| This is the most celebrated pass of the entire length of the Continental Divide. It is less than 7,500 feet above sea level. It is one of the few passes that is free of timber. The name was virtually given before the pass was discovered. It was long recognized that a pass must be found south of those crossed by Lewis and Clark, and Southern Pass, in contrast to the northern pass, was a term already well recognized. But when that remarkable crossing of the mountains came into use the name fell naturally upon it, and was quickly adopted as South Pass. (WPA) "Saturday, June 21.—Broke camp at 5.30 a. m., in the midst of a driving storm of cold rain, which soon turned into snow, and marched 10.6 miles to the stage-station at Pacific Springs. Here the storm turned into a severe gale of cold wind. Wood, grass, and water at this camp, which is on the northern border of the hot sage-brush plain over which we have been traveling. This vicinity is the "South Pass" of the early geographers, about which there has been so much fictitious writing and picture-making. As there are no mountains about it, and as the old road hardly crosses a hill of any magnitude, the misnomer is evident. The road, however, crosses at this point the divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific flowing waters, and this gave origin to the name." (Jones) |
