Highlights

Map of Wyoming (Click to enlarge)

Highlights Along or Near the Trail

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park—a region once rumored to be “the place where hell bubbles up.” Fur trappers’ fantastic tales of cauldrons of bubbling mud and roaring geysers sending steaming plumes skyward made their way back east. Several expeditions were sent to investigate, opening the West to further exploration and exploitation. In 1871, Ferdinand Hayden led an expedition that included artist Thomas Moran and photographer William H. Jackson. They brought back images that helped convince Congress that the area known as Yellowstone needed to be protected and preserved. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a law declaring Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, would forever be, “dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”

Teton Wilderness
The Teton Wilderness is an area of coniferous timber, waterfalls, wide meadows, lakes, streams and broad valleys. Highlights in this wilderness might include a view of the Yellowstone Meadows, a mile wide and seven miles long, through which the Yellowstone River meanders. This is a favored location for spotting the majestic moose.

South Fork of the Buffalo River
A beautiful waterfall cascades approximately 100 feet into a canyon less than 50 feet wide.

Two Ocean Pass
Nowhere is the magnitude of the Divide more prevalent than at Two Oceans Pass. At this point one can see the Divide at work; any precipitation within the Two Oceans Plateau diverges at Two Oceans Pass, headed for the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. North Two Oceans Creek makes its way south to Parting of the Waters National Natural Landmark, where the waterway splits; becoming Pacific Creek and Atlantic Creek. Pacific Creek is a tributary of the Snake River, eventually flowing 1,300 miles to the Pacific Ocean. Eastbound Atlantic Creek joins with the Yellowstone River destined for the Mississippi River drainage and Atlantic Ocean, nearly 3,500 miles away.

Wind River Range
Enormous compressional forces in the earth thrusted the block of granite that became the Wind River Range, upward. The glaciations and erosion that followed carved the range, leaving 13,804 foot Gannet Peak, the highest mountain in the Wilderness and in Wyoming. Glacial action left cirques, kettles, U-shaped valleys, hanging troughs, and lakes. The Wind River Range contains 48 summits higher than 12,500 feet and multiple glaciers.

Cirque of the Towers
Cirque of the Towers is located ten miles into the Bridger Wilderness on the southern portion of the Wind River Mountain Range. The Cirque is a breathtaking beautiful semi-circle of fifteen, 12,000-foot craggy peaks, which form a portion o f the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains. The Divide approaches along the ridge line from the southeast, makes a turn southwest, and wraps nearly ¾ of a full circle at the Cirque, before heading northeast on its way to Canada.

Square Top Mountain

Square Top Mountain, named for its nearly flat summit, rises in the Bridger Mountain Range. This range together with the Bighorn Mountains forms a hook like shape through northwestern Wyoming. Glaciers carved the basin formed in the center of the hook.

South Pass City
Near here atop the Continental Divide, the 49ers crossed South Pass in their rush westward to California over the Oregon Trail; it was here that some returned to in the late 1860s to develop South Pass City as a gold Mining town. South Pass City was also where Mrs. Esther Hobart Moris’ tea party spawned the Women’s Suffrage Bill, later to be enacted by State Legislature and to eventually become the model for national legislation, the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. South Pass is included in the National Register of Historic Places.

Great Divide Basin or Red Desert
At Oregon Buttes the Continental Divide splits into east and west rims which rejoin at Bridger’s Pass south of Rawlins, Wyoming and enclose the several million acre area known as the Great Divide Basin or Red Desert of Wyoming. Topographically this area is one of the few Continental Basins with no drainage to the outside. This Basin has great archeological value due to evidence of pre-Columbian man and important Indian petroglyph sites. Once home for buffalo, the Basin is now home to thousands of pronghorn antelope, and wild horses of Wyoming.

Sierra Madre Mountains
Wyoming’s Sierra Madre Mountains form the Continental Divide and the watersheds for the Yampa and North Platte Rivers. While on a scientific expedition in these mountains in 1879, Thomas Edison conceived the idea of an enduring carbon filament, inspired by his frayed bamboo rod while fishing on the shores of Battle Lake. This idea later resulted in the perfection of his incandescent electric lamp, a monument at the lake relates this bit of history.

Encampment
The town received its name, as it was the site where Indians and trappers would meet each summer to barter. Because the weather during the summer was mild, only tents were required for shelter. All this happened prior to the 1870s. The area had a little gold but more important, it had a bonanza in copper. The beginning of Encampment as a town began in 1897 with the founding of a copper mine. While prosperity lasted, the town had the reputation of being the wildest in the state of Wyoming and boasted a population of 5,000 until troubles began in 1906. It began with a fire, which burned the concentrating mill at the smelter. Then came a drop in the price of copper and the mine closed. Although the railroad came in 1908, it had only lumber to haul. When the lumber firm ceased operations, so did the railroad in 1962.

Battle
The town of Battle was named as a result of a battle fought between 500 Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne and 23 Rocky Mountain Fur Company trappers.