A half-century of love remembered

SUBLETTE CUTOFF -Historic Trails wagon train is scheduled to leave here today headed for a final celebration in Wyoming at Cokeville.

Graves marked the trail for the emigrants, but today most are unknown, their markings scattered by the wild animals and the clements. One grave that remains visible is that of Nancy Hill, who died of a sudden illness.

In 1943 Irene Paden retraced the events that. followed Hill's death. She wrote:

In the year 1900 Ed Sutton ... was visited by a stranger ~ a Mr. Wright. He had been at the last resting place of Nancy Hill and had come down to this neighbor to enlist friendly interest for the lonely grave on the mountain. He was to have married her ... had traveled in her wagon train. In the fifty-three years ... since he had helped bury her he had returned three times ... once in the seventies, once in the nineties, and now again ... Nancy Hill was a goddess of a girl, close to six feet tall and magnificently healthy. She was well in the morning. She was dead at noon. She was barely cold when they buried her. The wagon with her grieving relatives went on ... Her lover remained. He was mounted and could catch the wagons. He stayed a day or two at the grave ... Close to this grave Mr. Wright knew of seven more ... We soon came to the grave, at the head of Robinson's Hollow. It was about fifty yards from the road. Small gray sage and greasewood but afoot high crowded close.

Source: Historic Sites Along the Oregon Trail, used with permission