Emigrant Pass (Oregon)
in the Cascade Mountains
Emigrant Pass is a gap in the Cascade Range in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is about 0.5 miles (0.8 km) west of Summit Lake on the border between Klamath and Lane counties. Originally called Willamette Pass, it lay along a primitive road that paralleled the Middle Fork Willamette River to near the crest. The gap's name was changed in 1960, when the mountain pass used by Oregon Route 58 north of Odell Lake was named Willamette Pass.
By the 1850s, Emigrant Pass, slightly south of Willamette Pass, was being used by emigrants to the Oregon Territory as a way over the Cascades. In October 1853, a party of 1,500 was almost stranded at the pass, but was saved from a Donner Party-style tragedy by nearby settlers who had begun to improve the route up the Middle Fork Willamette River earlier that year as a shortcut between the Oregon Trail near Boise, Idaho, and the Willamette Valley.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25206024. Authority coordinates are 43.467, -122.139. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960 and 1853.
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This entry incorporates text from “Emigrant Pass (Oregon)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.