Devil's Gate: Owning the Land, Owning the Story

Devil’s Gate—the name conjures difficult passage and portends a doubtful outcome. In this eloquent and captivating narrative, Tom Rea traces the history of the Sweetwater River valley in central Wyoming—a remote place including Devil’s Gate, Independence Rock, and other sites along a stretch of the Oregon Trail—to show how ownership of a place can translate into owning its story.

Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Devil’s Gate is the center of a landscape that threatens to shrink any inhab...