Of particular importance to Wyoming is cultural heritage tourism which draws tourists to our public lands and state parks. Wyoming has at least 31 state parks and historic sites, two national parks, one national monument, one national grassland, and seven national forests. All of these include, and/or are located in proximity to, historic and/or prehistoric archaeological sites. The information that archaeological research uncovers about these sites helps enhance visitors’ experiences and promote tourism within the state. The residents of Wyoming are very interested in archaeology because it is ubiquitous across the State. Many different people lived here at many different times and public interest in these past cultures is high.
Folsom people are traditionally thought to be highly residentially mobile specialized bison hunters focused on the grasslands of the Great Plains. Recent research has begun to show greater variability in their land-use patterns and mobility in the mountains and intermountain Read More …
At 7,750 feet above sea level, and covering almost 300 square miles, Yellowstone Lake, in Wyoming, is North America’s largest high-elevation lake. Because of the numerous archeological sites that ring its 124 mile circumference, archeologist have long sought to understand Read More …
This paper will focus on a lease agreement, signed in October,2004, between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS Church) that allows the LDS Church control over a historical site known Read More …
Natural disturbances such as fires have been widely studied, but less is known about their spatial ecology than about other aspects of them. We reconstructed and mapped pre–Euro-American fire history in a subalpine forest landscape in southeastern Wyoming, and analyzed Read More …
Those of us with an interest in history have been much less successful in articulating the importance of the setting (or landscape) to the location of an historical event. As a result we are left to visualize history by attempting Read More …
For over a century, one of the unsolved mysteries of the 1846 emigrant migration to California has been the location of the burial sites of Luke Halloran of the Donner Reed Party and John Hargrave of the Harlan-Young emigrant groups.
In the wake of the California gold rush, traffic by Euro-Americans along the Oregon/California/Mormon Trail across what’s now central Wyoming grew dramatically for three years, and then, in the 1850s, stayed high. This was the old fur-trade route up the Read More …
The Greater Green River Basin is vast. Historically, it is revered as the heart of fur trapping county, in the era of the Mountain Men. It also served as a major crossing for migrant travelers headed West. It extends from Read More …
Protohistoric and probably Late Prehistoric Mountain Shoshones (sometimes known as Sheepeaters) who lived in and around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of north-western North America made soapstone bowls in the mountains at the time of Euroamerican contact. The Rocky Mountain soapstone Read More …
A small petroglyph panel is in the scoria uplands of northeastern Wyoming. A set of vertical parallel lines and individual horse tracks represent two motif classes typical of equestrian period Native American biographic rock art in the Powder River Basin. Read More …