Devil's Gate
Subtitle: Owning the Land, Owning the Story
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: September 20, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 307
ISBN-13: 9780806137926
Subjects: Sweetwater River Valley (Wyo.); United States - State & Local - West; Nonfiction - General; History, Local; History; History - U.S.; United States - State & Local - General; History: American; United States - 19th Century/Old West; Oregon National Historic Trail; History - General History; Biography
Description: "In this narrative, Tom Rea traces the history of the Sweetwater River valley in central Wyoming - a remote place that includes Devil's Gate, Independence Rock, and other sites along a storied stretch of the Oregon Trail - to show how legal ownership of a place can translate into owning its story." "The area was once heavily traveled. John C. Fremont passed through here, as did American Indians hunting for their own survival, half a million emigrants, the photographer W.H. Jackson, and an ambitious surveyor named Billy Owen. Occasional clusters of buildings, the modern highway, and a few historical markers are all that seem to distinguish the area now from what they encountered 150 years ago. But this static serenity masks a history of conflict."--Jacket.