Union Pass

The Union Pass on the plateau between Wind River Range and Gros Ventre Mountains

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The Union Pass is a mountain pass with an altitude of 2808 m in the Rocky Mountains. It is located in Fremont County of the U.S. state of Wyoming, near the border with the Sublette County. The pass exceeds a vast plateau, the North American Continental Divide. From the level three mountain ranges radiate in three directions from: The Wind River Range to the nearest Union Summit Peak ( 3501 m) to the southeast, the Gros Ventre Mountains to the west and the Absaroka Range to the north.

The pass was a traditional transport route of the local Indians by the people of the Eastern Shoshone, over which they could switch from the Valley of the Wind River in the north to the Green River in the south. Before here, there were over the valley of Fish Creek also connect further west to the Snake River. Thus, it represents a node that connected the catchment areas of the major river systems of the Mississippi River on the Wind River, the Colorado River via the Green River and the Columbia River via the Fish Creek.

As the first white fur traders took advantage of the Pacific Fur Company the pass, as they went overland to Astoria in 1811, to found the first American fur trading post on the Pacific Ocean. When the project failed, and six of them 1812/13 returned, they chose for fear of Indians a more southerly route and avoided the Wind River Range. Their exact route is not known, it is because of their description but as likely that they found the South Pass.

The Union pass never had a significant importance for traffic. In 1860 he received his name when Raynolds with Jim Bridger in the context of the first formal exploration of the region under the direction of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden hike through the mountains to find a way to the legendary Yellowstone area by William F. Raynolds. A certain notoriety reached the pass, as in the 1870s, General Philip Sheridan and 1883, the President of the United States, Chester A. Arthur, on a trip to the West and the Yellowstone National Park crossed the mountains to him.

Today, the pass marks the boundary between the Shoshone National Forest and the Bridger - Teton National Forest and is crossed by an unpaved forest road that connects the area to the north of Pinedale Dubois in the south. Longitudinal to him passes on the Continental Divide Continental Divide Trail, a 5,000 km long distance hiking trail. The pass is entered in the National Register of Historic Places since 1969.