Westbound emigrants in the Sweetwater Valley on the Oregon Trail saw the distinctive gunsight notch of Split Rock and “steered to this cliff with a steadiness that was astonishing,” according to one diarist. The landmark stands 11 miles west of Devil’s Gate and about 75 miles east of South Pass. 

Mountain men established a ferry across the Green River in 1843. Mormons bought it in 1850, when it became known as the Green River Mormon Ferry. Tens of thousands of emigrants crossed the river here. When William Lombard took over the business in 1889, it became known as the Lombard Ferry. 

Scout, guide, ferryman, freighter and stockman Jim Baker trapped with Jim Bridger and Kit Carson in the 1830s, guided troops in the 1850s and briefly ran a ferry over the Green River. In 1873, built a cabin near the Little Snake River in southern Wyoming, where he died in 1898. 

Devil’s Gate on the Sweetwater River became an important landmark for emigrants on the Oregon/California/Mormon trails. Trader Charles Lajeunesse ran a post there in the 1850s, not long before a Mormon handcart company sought shelter from a blizzard at nearby Matins Cove. Later, the famous Sun Ranch was headquartered there for 125 years.

From 1893-1913, the Tongue River Tie Flume carried 2 million railroad ties from the Bighorn Mountains to the Burlington Railroad. Ties moved at high speed down 38 miles of flumes across trestles and through tunnels in canyon walls. Workers’ camps were large mountain villages with schools and blacksmith shops.

Cheyenne’s M.H. “Bud” Robineau scrambled to put together the deals enabling construction during World War II of an airplane-fuel plant next to the Frontier Refinery he owned. Help from U.S. Sen. Joseph O’Mahoney proved crucial in cutting wartime red tape. The plant came online in 1944 and continued to produce high-octane fuel after the war.

If wells are the hearts, pipelines are the arteries of the oil business. Since the first line was laid 45 miles from the Salt Creek Field to Casper refineries in 1911, the pipeline business has grown steadily in Wyoming, transporting our hydrocarbons to local and world markets.

Civil engineer, librarian, athlete, professor and historian, Grace Hebard gained early power at the University of Wyoming, serving on its board of trustees and later its faculty over a 40-year career. Though many scholars now question her scholarship, she remains best known for her books on Wyoming’s past. 

Lora Nichols of Encampment, Wyo., got a camera for her 16th birthday in 1899 and kept snapping photos until her death at age 78. Her work leaves a vivid record of her time and place, and of her clear-eyed vision of the lives of her neighbors and kin.

Seeking a shorter way to the goldfields of Montana Territory, former prospector John Bozeman traced a route through the Powder River Basin—prized buffalo grounds for the resident tribes. A few hundred emigrants used the route between 1863 and 1866; later, as tribal resistance grew, it became primarily a military road.