A Quick Stop at South Pass City, Wyoming

No posts.

South Pass City is an unincorporated community in Fremont County, Wyoming, United States. It is located 2 miles (3 km) south of the intersection of highways 28 and 131. A former station on the Oregon Trail, it became a ghost town after later gold mines were closed. The entire community is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The closest town is Atlantic City. Some people have returned.

History ~

South Pass City developed rapidly as a stage and telegraph station on the Oregon Trail during the 1850s. The site of the first settlement in the area was about 9 miles (14 km) south of present-day South Pass City, at what is today known as Burnt Ranch. Burnt Ranch was located where the Emigrant Trails crossed the Sweetwater River for the last time and ascended toward the South Pass.

Total Pageviews

Hello! I'm Mr. Ed

Blog Created: 5-5-2022

Credits:

Wikipedia // Buckrail Website

In August 1861, 25-year-old Samuel Clemens (later Mark Twain) passed through South Pass City via stagecoach with his brother Orion, newly appointed as Secretary of Nevada Territory. Mark Twain later wrote about the experience in Roughing It, first published in 1872: ". . . we hove in sight of South Pass City. The hotelkeeper, the postmaster, the blacksmith, the mayor, the constable, the city marshal and the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and greeted us cheerily, and we gave him good day. He gave us a little Indian news, and a little Rocky Mountain news, and we gave him some Plains information in return. He then retired to his lonely grandeur and we climbed on up among the bristling peaks and the ragged clouds. South Pass City consisted of four log cabins, one of which was unfinished, and the gentleman with all those offices and titles was the chiefest of the ten citizens of the place. Think of hotelkeeper, postmaster, blacksmith, mayor, constable, city marshal and principal citizen all condensed into one person and crammed into one skin. [Fellow passenger] Bemis said he was 'a perfect Allen's revolver of dignities.' [The Allen was a small revolver notorious for sometimes firing all six chambers at once, according to Mark Twain.] And he said that if he were to die as postmaster, or as blacksmith, or as postmaster and blacksmith both, the people might stand it; but if he were to die all over, it would be a frightful loss to the community."

In 1866, gold was discovered in the vicinity, and a year later prospecting began on what would become the Carissa mine. Prospectors and adventurers quickly arrived and founded South Pass City. Within a year, the community's population had swelled to about 2,000. One of those who arrived in 1869 was Esther Hobart Morris. In 1870 she became the first woman in the United States to serve as a Justice of the Peace. At her urging in 1869, William H. Bright, a saloon owner and representative to the Wyoming Territorial Constitutional Convention, introduced a women's suffrage clause into the territorial constitution. When the constitution was approved by Territorial Governor John A.. Campbell in December 1869, Wyoming became the first jurisdiction in the United States to grant women the right to vote, a right which was not granted women nationally until 1920.

Within a decade, the city's population shrank dramatically, as the large gold deposits that had been hoped for failed to materialize. By the mid-1870s South Pass City's population was reduced to about 100 people but apparently grew to 180 by 1901. Over the next century the population of South Pass City declined even further. Many of the city's homes, mercantile stores, hotels and saloons fell into disrepair. A few businesses continued to operate in South Pass City, with the last of the pioneer families finally moving out in 1949.

South Pass City State Historic Site ~

By the end of the 20th century, steps were being taken to renew the community, and to develop it as an historic site for destination tourism. The community in the early 21st century consists of two areas: South Pass City, in which a handful of residents live, and South Pass City State Historic Site, which preserves more than 30 historic structures dating from the city's heyday in the 1860s and 1870s. In 1970, the community was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The town has been extensively documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in drawings and in photographs, by HABS photographer Jack Boucher.

Highways ~

The road west out of South Pass City intersects with WYO 28 two miles (3 km) west of town; Wyo. 28 intersects with US 287 thirty-five miles north of that intersection.

Popular culture ~

In The Outlaw Trail: A Journey Through Time, Robert Redford devoted a chapter to South Pass City.

========================================================================

Wyoming’s worst serial killer: The Murderess of Slaughterhouse Gulch ~

by Buckrail and headsup, December 8, 2017

WYOMING – There is still considerable debate over the legitimacy of the story but what a chilling tale it is. If true, the Murderess of Slaughterhouse Gulch would be the first and worst serial killer in the history of Wyoming. Some 22 killings are attributed to the “Hotel California” innkeeper where weary travelers checked in but would never leave.

Remains of the Bartlett Inn in South Pass City. (Wyoming Historical Society).

The time was 1868. South Pass City was booming. The highly productive Clarissa Mine and others like it had the place crawling with miners. Others were attracted by color found in the nearby hills. Even those without gold fever wandered through, South Pass was the perfect rest stop on the Oregon Trail for westbound travelers with a dream of starting over.

The Bartlett family arrived in South Pass after leaving Cincinnati where Stephen (in some accounts he is referred to as John; in others, still, he is called Jim) ran a rundown bar. He, a son, a relative named Hattie, and daughter Polly first tried Colorado but things didn’t work out there. When they settled in South Pass City, they opened a lodging house of sorts.

Polly Bartlett (Wyoming Historical Society).

Polly Bartlett was alleged to be the black widow of innkeepers. Seizing on single men for prey, she reportedly poisoned her victims with arsenic-laced steaks (presumable on hand to kill mice) after liquoring them up with a little whiskey and a little frisky. They were easy marks. Loners, drummers, miners, cowboys, deadbeats—if they had some money, Polly knew how to get it fast.

It was the perfect time and place: a rowdy mining town on the edge of the great frontier. Wyoming was not yet a state. The area was known to old-timers as Dakota country. Some newcomers were beginning to call it Wyoming Territory. They named South Pass City the county seat of Carter County. It would be changed to present-day Sweetwater in 1869.

All the while, nobody missed the missing in those days. It was not uncommon for people to go astray in 1860s Wyoming. Indian trouble was very real. Highwaymen would rob and kill for a silver dollar or a horse.

Esther Hobart Morris would be named first female justice of the peace in 1879, and later launch the women’s suffragette movement from a testosterone-fueled town of miners and miscreants. But first, Polly did her work. In the span of no more than a year, she reportedly drugged, robbed and buried more than 20 men with the help of her father.

Her final victim was a young man named Barney Fountain. The 23-year-old was the son of a wealthy mine owner, Bernard Fountain. After his disappearance, a Pinkerton detective started looking into things and before long the sheriff/marshal of Carter County, a man named Adam Lombardi, posted a $13,000 reward for the Bartlett’s, who had struck out in a hurry, reportedly headed for Oregon.

Ed Ford ended up collecting the reward after tracking down the Bartletts days later camped along the Hoback River. He shot and killed the father and brought back Polly for her hanging.

Ed Ford (Wyoming Historical Society).

It was fitting Ford be the one to capture Polly. Months before he was almost seduced and poisoned like all her other victims but he did not care for alcohol so Polly’s plans were foiled. Later, when Ed’s brother Sam went missing after staying at the Bartlett Inn, Ed became suspicious. He convinced the sheriff that something wasn’t right at the Bartlett Inn of death.

As so often happened in those days (Morris even joked once her job was mostly quiet and boring because of vigilante justice) Polly never made it to trial. While being held in jail, a man named Otto Kalkhorst blasted her through a cell window with both barrels of a shotgun on October 7, 1868. Kalkhorst was a foreman at one of the mines owned by Bernard Fountain. He was never tried for the murder.

Authorities reportedly dug up some 22 bodies from corrals on the Bartlett property. That would make Polly Bartlett the most cold-blooded killer in state history.

Story Published on the Buckrail website