Photograph - Bessemer Bend, a Most Significant Turn of The North Platte River in Natrona County, Wyomingl This was The Point of The Last Crossing by Oregon, Mormon, and California Trail 1

Bessemer Bend, a most significant turn of the North Platte River in Natrona County, Wyomingl this was the point of the last crossing by Oregon, Mormon, and California Trail emigrants of that looping, winding river, which comes up from Nebraska, curves over what is now the city of Casper, and dives southward toward Colorado. Through trial and error, the emigrants had found that this was the least dangerous point to cross the wild and unpredictable river before Mormon entrepreneurs created a ferry over the river in 1847. Four decades later, this place became the townsite of Bessemer, which its creators envisioned as the "Queen City of the West" after the discovery of oil throughout the valley. But the railroad went to Casper instead, and the town dried up | Credit line: Gates Frontiers Fund Wyoming Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.|Purchase; Carol M. Highsmith Photography, Inc.; 2015; (DLC/PP-2015:069).|Forms part of: Gates Frontiers Fund Wyoming Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.