independence rock

Traders known only as Merchant and Williams built a post near Devil’s Gate in 1861, on ground already steeped in trading-post history, and, within a year, tangled up in Civil War troop movements, a Mormon militia company, and the site’s violent Native and emigrant past.

Less than three years after French painter Louis Daguerre shared with the world how to make pictures on polished sheets of silver-plated copper, Lt. John C. Fremont attempted to photograph the land we think of as Wyoming. The early photographers of Wyoming adapted new technology to rough terrain and unforgiving elements.

Along the Sweetwater River near Independence Rock, Archambault’s Post traded with emigrants and Native peoples through the 1850s, its history tangled with the neighboring Seminoe’s Post. Abandoned by 1856, it briefly sheltered Mormon handcart emigrants stranded that fall in a killing snowstorm.

French-Canadian trader Louis Guinard built a bridge and trading post below Independence Rock in 1857, hoping to profit from Utah Expedition traffic, only to abandon it two years later for a bigger, and ultimately more dangerous, venture on the North Platte.

Mixed-race families in early Wyoming appear to have sold oil skimmed from seeps to travelers on the emigrant trails, who used the oil to lubricate their wagon axles. It was a small start for what has become the huge petroleum business, so important to Wyoming today.