Wyoming · Ghost town
South Pass City
A gold town beside the crossing that took the whole westward migration over the Rockies, and where women first won the vote in America.
Position Fremont County, Wyoming · 42.4683, -108.7997
South Pass City sits in Fremont County, two miles south of where highways 28 and 131 meet. It grew as a mining town beside South Pass itself, the broad saddle that carried the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail and the California Trail over the Continental Divide.
That location is the point. Hundreds of thousands of people crossed here because it was the one place a wagon could get over the Rockies without a mountain grade. The gold that made the town was almost incidental to the traffic.
The town has a further claim. Wyoming Territory granted women the vote in 1869, and the legislator who introduced the bill represented South Pass City. The first female justice of the peace in the United States, Esther Hobart Morris, held office here.
The whole community is on the National Register of Historic Places and is run as a state historic site. The nearest town is Atlantic City, which is itself close to being a ghost town.
Facts checked against the Wikipedia article South Pass City, Wyoming. The words above are ours.