Photograph by Phil Konstantin, Public domain. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
Oregon Trail Ruts
A National Historic Landmark. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
From the record
“Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site is a preserved site of wagon ruts of the Oregon Trail on the North Platte River, about 0.5 miles south of Guernsey, Wyoming. The Oregon Trail here was winding up towards South Pass.”
Wikipedia article Oregon Trail Ruts, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 14 National Register listings published here for Platte County · listed in 1966 · category: Site · a National Historic Landmark.
National Register reference number.66000761- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
24 since 1996
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 24 fires within 5 miles of Oregon Trail Ruts
between 1996 and 2020, burning about 3,680 acres in total. 5 started naturally. None was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
11
Natural
5
Equipment and vehicle use
4
Debris and open burning
2
Firearms and explosives use
1
Recreation and ceremony
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
10 workings within 5 miles of Oregon Trail Ruts: 3 past producers, 3 prospects, 2 producers, 2 occurrences.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Dolomite, Iron, Silica, Stone. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Guernsey, the town this property stands in, in 39 storm reports between 1997 and 2025: 29 hail, 5 thunderstorm wind, 2 tornado, 1 flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A trained spotter found 1-inch hail on the ground accumulated several inches deep, approximately 4 miles W of Guernsey. Estimated time hail fell based on radar.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
4 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
Block
