tom sun

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.

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.

News stories published about the July 20, 1889, hanging of Ella Watson and Jim Averell contained inaccuracies that historians and others accepted as fact for more than 100 years, leading to a variety of misunderstandings and resulting in questions about truth and history that haunt researchers today.