Devil's Gate--the name conjures difficult passage and portends a
doubtful outcome. In this eloquent and captivating narrative, Tom
Rea traces the history of the Sweetwater River valley in central
Wyoming--a remote place including Devil's Gate, Independence Rock,
and other sites along a stretch of the Oregon Trail--to show how
ownership of a place can translate into owning its story.
Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Devil's Gate is the center
of a landscape that threatens to shrink any inhabitants to
insignificance except for one thing: ownership of the land and the
stories they choose to tell about it. The static serenity of the
once heavily traveled region masks a history of conflict.
Tom Sun, an early rancher, played a role here in the lynching of
the only woman ever hanged in Wyoming. The lynching was dismissed
as swift frontier justice in the wake of cattle theft, but Rea
finds more complicated motives that involve land and water rights.
The Sun name was linked with the land for generations. In the
1990s, the Mormon Church purchased part of the Sun ranch to
memorialize Martin's Cove as the site of handcart pioneers who
froze to death in the valley in 1856.
The treeless, arid country around Devil's Gate seems too immense
for ownership. But stories run with the land. People who own the
land can own the stories, at least for a time.
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