History & News

The first Mountain Man Rendezvous was in Sweetwater County

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Photo #1 - Site of the first Mountain Man Rendezvous, in southern Sweetwater County

Photo #2 - Interpretive sign near the site of the 1825 Rendezvous not far from McKinnon, in Sweetwater County, Wyoming

Photo #3 - Location of the 1825 Rendezvous on Henry’s Fork

Photo #4 - Rendezvous Near Green River, by Alfred Jacob Miller, depicting the 1837 Rendezvous not far from what is now Daniel, Wyoming, at the confluence of Horse Creek and the Green River. Miller was the only painter ever to record a Rendezvous firsthand.

Photo #5 - The Sweetwater County Historical Museum features exhibits on Native Americans, mountain men, and the fur trade

(Sweetwater County, Wyo. - July 26, 2022)    With this year’s Fort Bridger Mountain Man Rendezvous at Fort Bridger in Uinta County scheduled for September 2 through September 5, the staff at the Sweetwater County Museum in Green River issued a reminder on Tuesday that the first Rendezvous was held in 1825 in what is now Sweetwater County.   

Organized by fur trading companies, Rendezvous were staged every year from 1825 to 1840 at different locations in Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho. Mountain men, trappers, and Native Americans gathered to sell their furs, trade for supplies, and celebrate.

That first rendezvous was staged on Henry’s Fork, three miles northeast of Burntfork and about 40 miles southwest of Green River. Mountain man James Beckwourth provided a description:

“ ...there was a general jubilee among all at the rendezvous, We constituted quite a little town, numbering at least eight hundred souls, of whom one half were women and children. There were some among us who had not seen any groceries, such as coffee, sugar,& c., for several months. The whisky went off as freely as water, even at the exorbitant price he [William Henry Ashley, co-owner of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, for whom the Ashley National Forest is named] sold it for. All kinds of sports were indulged in with a heartiness that would astonish more civilized societies.”

The Museum’s gallery includes exhibits on Native Americans, mountain men, and the frontier-era fur trade. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and there is no charge for admission.

The Union Pacific Checkerboard

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Graphic #1 - The township of 36 square miles is a fundamental unit of land area measurement, and was used to create the Union Pacific Checkerboard

Graphic #2 - The Union Pacific Checkerboard, as it extended along the Transcontinental Railroad across Wyoming

Graphic #3 - The Checkerboard in Sweetwater County. The 1901 map’s legend marks the majority of its townships as “All or Part for Sale.”

Graphic #4 - The 1901 Rand McNally map’s legend

Graphic #5 - The Union Pacific Checkerboard today, as it appears on the Sweetwater County website as a detailed interactive map

(Sweetwater County, Wyo. - July 23, 2022)     A vintage railroad land grant map recently examined by the staff at the Sweetwater County Historical Museum is a reminder of how the events of a century and a half ago still effect our lives today. Case in point:  the Union Pacific Checkerboard.  

The Transcontinental Railroad, extending across the American west from Omaha, Nebraska, to San Francisco, was officially launched on July 1, 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act. On paper, the plan was simple:  the Central Pacific Railroad of California would lay track east from California, and the newly-created Union Pacific Railroad would work west from Omaha, Nebraska, until the two met on May 10, 1869, at what would become famous as Promontory Point, Utah, thereby linking the east and west by rail. The Union Pacific line passed across the entire length of southern Wyoming, from Cheyenne to Evanston. Ultimately, the Central Pacific constructed 690 miles of track and the Union Pacific 1,085 miles.

The project was enormous in its scale, arguably the most iconic construction operation in American history, with a cost to match. In addition to a $27 million government loan - over $783 million in 2022 dollars - the railroads were granted first 10, then 20 one-square-mile sections of land for each mile of track laid, creating a checkerboard of odd-numbered sections for an average of 20 miles on each side of the tracks. In this manner, in Wyoming alone the Union Pacific was ceded in excess of 4,500,000 acres.

The graphic shown here helps explain the process. A basic unit of land survey area measure is a township, a square of six miles by six miles for a total of 36 square miles, or 36 sections. Each one-square-mile section contains 640 acres. A township’s sections are numbered from 1  to 36, from east to west, then west to east, then repeated twice more. The odd-numbered sections went to the Union Pacific, while the U.S. government retained the even-numbered sections. When the U.P.’s sections are shaded, the areas so mapped resemble a checkerboard.  

The map examined at the museum was published in 1901 by Rand McNally, and depicts what Checkerboard lands were available from the Union Pacific at the time. “Farm Lands” in lots of 160 acres and up were listed for $5.00 to $12.50 per acre, “Ranch Lands,” 640 acres and up ran $1.50 to $5.00 per acre, and “Grazing Lands” were the cheapest of all, at $.50 to $1.50 per acre.

The Union Pacific Checkerboard continues to exist today as it was originally laid out, though most of the land ownership, aside from Bureau of Land Management sections, has changed.

Today much of the Checkerboard acreage belongs to agricultural interests or oil and gas industry operations.

Sweetwater County maintains an excellent, extremely detailed interactive online county map that clearly illustrates the Checkerboard, at

https://maps.greenwoodmap.com/sweetwater/map#zcr=0.3905093595548445/2156826.012312299/391992.74025400134/0&lyrs=taxclass,national,water,ownership,roads&filter=(pidn%20in('2104-03-1-00-010-00')).

The Sweetwater County Historical Museum is located at 3 E. Flaming Gorge Way in Green River. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and there is no charge for admission.

Excellent turnout for “Family Fun Friday - Fabulous Fossils” at County Museum

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Photo #1 - Aidan Brady of the Sweetwater County Historical Museum describing prehistoric life in Sweetwater County at Friday’s “Family Fun Friday - Fabulous Fossils” event.

Photo #2 - Children at the Museum’s special event on Friday got hands-on experience in digging their own fossils, just as paleontologists do at actual dig sites.

Photo #3 - Many who attended Friday’s event toured the Museum afterward. Gallery exhibits include prehistoric life in Sweetwater County, Native Americans, the mountain men, frontier-era emigrants, ranching, coal and trona mining, the Lincoln Highway, the Chinese in Rock Springs, the railroad, and John Wesley Powell’s expeditions down the Green and Colorado Rivers and through the Grand Canyon.

(Sweetwater County, Wyo. - July 19, 2022)    The Sweetwater County Historical Museum’s latest special event was attended by over a hundred people.

On Friday, the Museum hosted “Family Fun Friday - Fabulous Fossils,” an outdoor event. Public Engagement Coordinator Aidan Brady spoke about Wyoming’s prehistoric and geological history, and described the dinosaurs that once roamed Sweetwater County.

Children at the event got to handle and explore variety of fossils, including Knightias, which are Wyoming’s official State Fossil, and learned firsthand how paleontologists use trowels, brushes, and screens to dig and sift for fossils in a dig pit.

Other family-friendly events are planned at the Museum for the near future, including gold panning, adobe brick making, and Native American basket weaving.

The Museum is located at 3 E. Flaming Gorge Way in Green River. Hours are 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Tuesday through Saturday, and admission is free.

Black Buttes Snapshot

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