Union Pass Interpretive Display
About 8 miles west of Dubois, Wyoming on U.S. Highway 287/26 & 15 miles south on Union Pass Rd.

Union Pass
At this pass-midst a maze of mountain ranges and water courses which had sometimes baffled and repulsed them-aboriginal hunters, mountain men, fur traders and far-ranging explorers have, each in his time, found the key to a geographic conundrum. For them that conundrum had been a far more perplexing problem than such an ordinary task as negotiating the crossing, however torturous, of an unexplored pass occurring along the uncomplicated divide of an unconnected mountain chain.

Hereabouts the Continental Divide is a tricky, triple phenomenon wherein the unguided seeker of a crossing might find the right approach and still arrive at the wrong ending. In North America there are seven river systems that can be cited as truly continental in scope but only in this vicinity and at one other place do as many as three of them head against a common divide. Indians called this region the Land of Many Rivers and mountain men named the pass Union, thereby both—once again-proving themselves gifted practitioners of nomenclature.

Union Pass is surrounded by an extensive, rolling, mountain-top terrain wherein elevations vary between nine and ten thousand feet and interspersed water courses deceptively twist and turn as if undetermined betwixt an Atlantic or a Pacific destination. This mountain expanse might be visualized as a rounded hub in the center of which, like an axle’s spindle, fits the pass. Out from this hub radiate three spokes, each one climbing and broadening into mighty mountain ranges-southeasterly the Wind Rivers, southwesterly the Gros Ventres and northerly, extending far into Montana, the Absarokas.

The Rendezvous
Twelve thousand foot mountain plateaus dominating this view of Green River and Snake River headwaters seemingly provide a southwesterly buttress for loftier peaks forming the core of the Wind River Range. Beyond them it is 43 miles from Union Pass to where confluence of the Green and its Horse Creek tributary marks the most famed of several “rendezvous” grounds relating to that epoch in American history known as the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade.

“Rendezvous”, defined as a trade fair in wilderness surroundings, was held in diverse locations throughout the Central Rocky Mountain region. It required spacious, grassy environs for grazing thousands of horses, raising hundreds of trapper and Indian lodges and for horse races and other spectacles exuberantly staged by mountain men and Indians then relaxed from vigilance against dangers which otherwise permitted no unguarded carrousels. A favorite area for “rendezvous” was along the Green, recognized for producing the primest beaver peltry, and for conveniently straddling the South Pass logistic route utilized for transport of trade goods and furs between St. Louis and the mountains. On the Green the finest “rendezvous” grounds—rendered especially famous through Alfred Jacob Miller’s paintings of the 1837 scene—were those at Horse Creek.

Depending on arrival of St. Louis supply caravans, ‘rendezvous” usually extended through early July. At the close of revels—leaving many mountain men deeply in debt—there remained up to two months before prime furs signaled the start of fall hunting. The intervening time was pleasantly occupied in traveling and exploring high mountain terrain; then trails around Union Pass were furrowed by Indian travois only to be leveled again by the beating hoofs of the trapper’s pack trains.

Cultural Heritage
High in mountains where the natural environment changes swiftly, eroding or burying its past, for how long a time can vestiges of man’s frailer achievements withstand obliteration? No matter!, for here man has brought or developed cultures which are already heritages— treasured in memory if lost in substance.

Presented is a natural scene, a park surrounded by forest and parted by a virgin stream. But it is crossed by a road and also by a zigzag fence of rotting logs. Reconnaissance might reveal a campsite of prehistoric aborigines or discover a beaver trap once the property of a mountain man. Thus, is a cultural environment incorporated with the natural one.

Indians hunted these environs far into historic time. From exits of Union Pass, tribal trails branch in all directions. The road mentioned above, elsewhere explained, might cover ruts made by travois, Camps of mountain tribes, their chipping grounds, drivelines and animal traps exist throughout the area. Earliest among far western fur traders came this way—possibly Colter in 1807, certainly Astorians under Hunt in 1811. Mountain men camped here, Jim Bridger surely during the 1820s and, much later, guiding Captain Raynolds in 1860. Others, whose camping grounds may some day he ascertained, include: Bonneville, soldier, explorer, fur trader, enigma-recording carefully in 1833; Gannett, of the 1870’s Geologic Survey with Yount his hunter-packer; Togwotee, a Shoshone Sheep Eater; Wister, famous author; Bliss, horse thief; Anderson, precursory forester; and, not far distant, Sheridan, a general and Arthur, a President of the United States.

The zigzag fence of rotting logs is a vestige of a continuing culture. Pastoral in nature it relates to the 1920 decade when cattlemen, under U.S. Forest Service permit, fenced rich grasslands to hold beef herds, fattening for the market.

Fauna of Union Pass
Before primitive man discovered this pass between rich hunting grounds native ungulates grazed here during summers, migrating to the river valleys and plains for winters. These high plateaus and mountain meadows then harboured thousands of bison.

Though bison are gone, hundreds of elk (wapiti), mule deer and pronghorn antelope summer on Union Pass and in the near vicinity. Bighorn sheep live the year-round on high peaks and plateaus, venturing occasionally to timbered slopes and mountain meadows, Black hear are much in evidence and Lord Grizzly-”Old Ephraim” to mountain men and, in Indian lore, sometimes “Our Brother”-still occasionally roams the nearby forests and crags. Only the Shiras moose had not yet arrived in the days of mountain men, having only migrated this far south since about 1870.

Around 1900 the canine teeth of bull elk were worth their weight in gold. Northwestern Wyoming, isolated midst an abundance of game, was a favorite base of operations for notorious tusk hunters until early day game wardens, forest rangers and private citizens combined to drive the outlaws out.

Except for loss of bison and gain of moose, native fauna is much the same as it was in the days of fur trade. Beaver and trout still inhabit streams. Occasionally an otter may be seen cavorting along stream banks and mink are common to such environs. Pine Martin their peltry prized next to Siberian Sable and much sought by a later generation of mountain men, porcupines and red squirrels inhabit coniferous forests. Marmots and ground squirrels are found in rocky ledges and grassy meadows along with many lesser four-footed denizens. At Union Pass the prehistoric hunter or the most recent recreationist might have seen:

Resources—Ownership—Exploitation—Administration
Aesthetic and economic resources surround Union Pass, extending far to the west, north and southwest. These include grass, browse and forest plus animals living thereby and therein. Ownership of lands and vegetation repose in the nation’s people; Wyoming’s citizens own the wild animals; livestock, seasonally pastured, are privately owned.

Separate laws enacted in 1869 by Wyoming’s first Territorial Assembly pertained to branding livestock and protecting wildlife. An incipient but immediately popularized livestock industry received credit for the first. But sponsors of the second, even following its augmentation in 1870 by a rudimentary wildlife agency, went, in that era of materialism, unnoticed. Few territorial fields of endeavor possessed sufficient background for practitioners to appreciate benefits stemming from conservation. Only the fur trade—flourishing in 1826, impoverished by 1840—had produced a second generation cognizant of dangers inherent in ruthless exploitation. Throughout such environs as Union Pass its diminished members trapped and hunted, sometimes outfitting (guide service, pack trains, supplies) clients attracted to the Territory by both its mountain wildernesses and continuing bonanza in open range livestock operations. From such relationships emerged types of outfitting and mountain valley ranching operations predisposed to conservation practices.

Spearheading a long overdue national conservation movement, Theodore Roosevelt found among such ranchers and outfitters men who played leading roles in organizing the first national forests out of the unwieldy Yellowstone Timberland Reserve and in developing an administrative structure adopted by the subsequent U.S. Forest Service.

Searching for complementary talents the Forest Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission have both recruited personnel experienced in ranching and outfitting as well as the graduates of professional schools. Subject—as are all human efforts—to occasional errors, the administrators of Union Pass surroundings have successfully protected and enhanced its natural environment.

Flora At Union Pass
Union Pass the cultural site must first have been Union Pass the natural site. As a natural site it commenced to produce vegetation and was afterwards inhabited by animals before it ever became attractive to man—for any purpose other than the thrill of exploration.

Development of present flora at Union Pass is an evolvement of recent time. The connection between conspicuous boulders and glaciers lately covering the area is mentioned elsewhere, but lichens still thriving grew on those boulders before all local ice had melted. Other flora, needing more favorable conditions, probably didn’t attain a flourishing status until following the altithermal period causing cessation of glaciers—about 7,000 years ago.

The forest’s development into a climax, a spruce-fir culmination, has been slowed by wildfires. But forest cover is now expanding through man’s protective measures plus continuing evolution of soils as in the filling of ponds and marshes from sedimentation and organic matter.

Fortunately, Union Pass is in a park, not in the forest. From its view the foreground is covered on the drier, higher area by sagebrush, bunchgrasses and forbs favoring semi-arid conditions; low grounds support grassland communities, patches of willows and sedge meadows bordering ponds. Common plants are big sage brush, shrubby cinquefoil, Idaho fescue, slender wheat grass, Indian paintbrush and lupine along the streams grow willows, sedges, rushes, little red elephant, march marigold and globe mallow.

Southeast—toward the Wind River Range—Engleman Spruce-subalpine fir growth is in wetter areas and whitebark pine along hilltops and ridges. To the west—forward—is a younger growth of Engleman Spruce and lodgepole pine fringing expanding forests while within older lodgepole stands are in various stages of transition to the spruce-fir climax. Understory plants are grouse whortle berry, lupine, sedges and grasses.

The Ramshorn
Jutting like the topsail of a ship from beyond the apparent horizon, a tip of the Ramshorn is seen. It serves to remind the viewer of the Absarokas, a cragged mountain range broader and longer than the Wind Rivers but slightly less elevated. These mountains take their name from Indians identified as Crows or Ravens in the Journals of Lewis and Clark. Fur traders adopting that appellation passed it along to subsequent generations excepting only Absarokas themselves who, echoing forefathers, Anglicize their name to Bird People.

Tip rather than peak is used advisedly; there are peaks in the Absarokas but they are not a dominant feature of that range. Originating in a typical anticlinal fold, the Absarokas have been capped by lava strata measuring to thousands of feet, a geological evolvement known as a volcanic pile. Accordingly, their summits tend to be flat although simultaneous erosion throughout periods of flowing lava prohibited the forming of an all-encompassing tableland. Continued erosion has resulted in a range marked by deep canyons, precipitous ridges, notched passes and escarpment delimited plateaus. Summits rising above a plateau’s general elevation are composed of harder materials and sometimes indicate proximity of a former lava fissure. The Ramshorn is one such plateau but its name derives from its escarpment-3,000 feet of cliffs and talus slopes, curving for miles around its southwestern flank like the horn of a mountain ram.

It is appropriate that this mountain be named Ramshorn. The Absarokas offer habitat to a variety and an abundance of wildlife but escarpments and plateaus, producing grass and browse swept free of snow by winter gales, make ideal mountain sheep ranges. Trails established by sheep-eating Shoshones, now followed by other wilderness enthusiasts, attest to mankind’s fascination with the wild sheep of the Absarokas.

Road Through A Pass
A road, component of a cultural environment, is the most noticeable feature of this otherwise natural landscape. In present form it is not old, not a pioneer route hacked by frontiersmen. Based and graded to support rapid haulage of ponderous loads of logs, this road was built by specialists operating specialized machines. It is a product of 20th century technological culture.

A road of a sort is an ancient and, originally, a natural feature at Union Pass. Wild animals, some camels, indigenous horses, mammoths now extinct, found this passageway and, following easiest grades during seasonal migrations, trod out—wide in places as a road—a trail, Perhaps 10,000 years ago progenitors of Nimrod trailed these animals around the edges of a receding glacier and on through Union Pass—leaving along that route its first traces of human culture. Around 1700 A.D. Shoshones, descendants or replacements of the earliest hunters, acquired the horse and, among other impacts made by them on the natural environment, the dragging ends of their travois poles widened and deepened this road.

Chronological stages in the Union Pass cultural environment have been: aboriginal, for trade, explorations and geological surveys, outfitting (recreational industry) and ranching, and management of natural resources—including forestry. Forestry, defined as “cultivating, maintaining, and developing forests”, implying harvesting, came last owing to local patterns of development. Although Wyoming was a bellwether in Theodore Roosevelt’s early conservation movement, pressing local concern regarding new national forests centered on livestock grazing and wildlife and watershed protection—forestry waited. Substantial timber harvesting, a tie hack era, only began after 1900; upgrading a Union Pass wagon road to high speed hauling standards was a mid-century project.

Wind River Range
Postulating the traverse of the Continental Divide the eye climbs to Union Peak, some four airline miles but nearer six by that tortuous route. At 11,491 feet Union Peak is a nondescript rise that draws attention only because it is the final timberline topping elevation on the northwestern end of the Wind River Range. Appearing slightly behind and more to the right, but actually seven miles further along the traverse of the divide, is Three Waters Mountain. That is as far into the Wind Rivers as can be seen from Union Pass. However, if vision could continue to follow the southeasterly bearing of the divide, the viewer might estimate 20 and 30 miles to where nearer 13,804 foot Gannett Peak and farther 13,745 foot Fremont Peak mark the scope of the heart of that range.

The Wind River Range is the highest mountain mass in Wyoming. Basically it is a broad uplift which originated about 60 million years ago during a period of “mountain building” called the Laramide Orogeny. The core of the range reveals Precambrian crystalline rocks, and Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary rocks are upturned on the flanks. The Wind River Range, although south of continental ice caps, was extensively glaciated during the Pleistocene epoch and such sizable lakes as Newfork, Boulder, Fremont, Bull, Green River and Dinwoody, filling canyons and valleys along its widespread flanks, are dammed behind moraines. Existent glaciers in the highest parts of the Wind Rivers are small by comparison, yet they are often cited as the largest ice fields within the contiguous states of the Union.

Boulders strewing Union Pass environs are surface evidence that this northern margin of the range was subdued, by spreading glaciers which have left a blanket of till and moraine material.

Three Waters Mountain
Southeast rises a mountain given a lyrical name, one such as Indians or mountain men discovering a geographical phenomenon might have chosen. Midway of its four-mile long crest is the key point, one of only two in North America, where as many as three of the continents seven major watersheds interlock.

Here a raindrop splits into thirds, the three tiny driblets destined to wend their separate ways along continuously diverging channels to the oceans of the world. One driblet arrives in the Gulf of Mexico, 3,000 miles distant by way of Jakeys Fork, Wind River, Bighorn, Yellowstone, Missouri, and Mississippi; another joins currents running 1,400 miles to the Pacific through Fish Creek, the Gros Ventre, Snake and Columbia; the final one descends more than 1,300 miles to the Gulf of California; via Roaring Fork, Green River and the Colorado.

Seemingly neither Indians nor fur trappers named this mountain. Locally it has been called Triple Divide Peak, but only a bench mark (11,642 ft.) and lines denoting a junction of divides point to it on the Geological Survey’s map of 1906. The Survey’s 1968 map (correcting the B.M. to 11,675 ft.) officially names this long crest projecting in a northwesterly descent from the 13,800 foot glacier swathed peaks at the heart of the Wind River Range—Three Waters Mountain. That latter day cartographer, possessing the imagination and finding the inspiration to contrive this name, thus proved himself a worthy disciple of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden and his competent assistants who were precursors and, in 1879, helpers in the founding of the United States Geological Survey.