Devil’s Gate: Owning the Land, Owning the Story, by Tom Rea

Devil’s Gate – the very 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 and shows how legal ownership of a place can translate into owning its story. This volume goes to the heart of a seemingly empty place and finds a landscape teeming with life and death and many histories. With precision and passion, Rea unearths the human struggles long buried in this vast and lonesome country. This is western history at its most compelling. Some of those featured include John C. Fremont, Brigham Young, the Hayden survey party, Tom Sun (an early rancher), Ezra Meeker, Ella “Cattle Kate” Watson (the only woman ever hanged in Wyoming) and a number of equally fascinating pioneers.