Permanent damage across the Oregon Trail
The pioneers focused mainly on not dying; more likely that they didn’t give a lot of thought to their impact on the environment. They left debris along the trail, discarded garbage, wherever, they carved their names into “register rocks” and hastily buried fellow wagon train members where they died so the party could move on quickly. Trash was cleared out and bodies decomposed, but emigrants left permanent damage on the landscape. Ruts from wagon wheels still slash through the prairie in some areas of the trail. Grass doesn’t grow in these ruts Names can still be seen on Independence Rock, Register Cliff, and Names Hill in Wyoming, rocks along the Sweetwater River.