Parting of the Ways

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

From the record

“The Parting of the Ways is a historic site in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, United States, where the Oregon and California Trails fork from the original route to Fort Bridger to an alternative route, the Sublette-Greenwood Cutoff, across the Little Colorado Desert. Many wagon trains parted company, some preferring the shorter cutoff route, which involved fifty waterless miles, to the longer but better-watered main route.”
Wikipedia article Parting of the Ways (Wyoming), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 28 National Register listings published here for Sweetwater County · listed in 1976 · category: Site.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 site, 1 object as contributing to the listing.
Address. 15 mi. NE of Farson, Farson
When was it listed? January 1976
Category. site
Census division. Rock Springs North
National Register reference number. 76001962 - 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

1 since 2020

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Parting of the Ways in 2020, burning under an acre in total. None 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
Equipment and vehicle use	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
13 July 2020	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Sweetwater County	WATER DISTRICT FIRE

Every fire recorded in Sweetwater County

Storms near this property

4 since 2000

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Farson, the town this property stands in, in 4 storm reports between 2000 and 2025: 2 thunderstorm wind, 1 funnel cloud, 1 tornado. 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
May 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Farson	-	The WYDOT weather sensor at Farson reported wind gusts as high as 70 mph.
July 2025	Tornado (EF0)	Farson	-	The public reported a landspout tornado to the north of Highway 28 to the west of Farson, including a picture of the tornado in contact with the ground. The tornado remained over open country and caused no known damage.
July 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Farson	-	A 59 mph wind gust was reported at Farson.
April 2000	Funnel Cloud	Farson	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Sweetwater County

Map coverage status

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.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 76001962 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Sweetwater County	All 28 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

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.
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.