"In this narrative, Tom Rea traces the history of the Sweetwater River valley in central Wyoming - a remote place that includes Devil's Gate, Independence Rock, and other sites along a storied stretch of the Oregon Trail - to show how legal ownership of a place can translate into owning its story." "The area was once heavily traveled. John C. Fremont passed through here, as did American Indians hunting for their own survival, half a million emigrants, the photographer W.H. Jackson, and an ambitious surveyor named Billy Owen. Occasional clusters of buildings, the modern highway, and a few historical markers are all that seem to distinguish the area now from what they encountered 150 years ago. But this static serenity masks a history of conflict."--Jacket.

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