|
 
$26.95
New Hardcover
Ships in 1 to 3 days
 Available for In-store Pickup
in 7 to 12 days
Devil's Gate: Owning the Land, Owning the Storyby Staff Of Research Education Association
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Devils 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 Devils 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, Devils Gate is the center of a landscape that threatens to shrink any inhabitants to insignificance except for one thing: ownership of the land and the stories they choose to tell about it. The static serenity of the once heavily traveled region masks a history of conflict. Tom Sun, an early rancher, played a role here in the lynching of the only woman ever hanged in Wyoming. The lynching was dismissed as swift frontier justice in the wake of cattle theft, but Rea finds more complicated motives that involve land and water rights. The Sun name was linked with the land for generations. In the 1990s, the Mormon Church purchased part of the Sun ranch to memorialize Martins Cove as the site of handcart pioneers who froze to death in the valley in 1856. The treeless, arid country around Devils Gate seems too immense for ownership. But stories run with the land. People who own the land can own the stories, at least for a time. Book News Annotation:It has an unlikely name, the Sweetwater River valley, and it occupies
one of the most rugged of spaces in the rugged state of Wyoming. In
it or near it masses of Native Americans hunted, a woman was hanged,
migrants froze to death, and thousands of pioneers paused at the
valley's Independence Rock on their way to Oregon. Who owned the land
then and owns it now has control of a vast repertoire of American
history. Rea follows the stories of the land and how they changed
according to who owned it, ranging from early settlers to one of the
most prominent early ranchers who was instrumental in the only
lynching of a woman in Wyoming all the way to the present, in which
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints operates a museum in
honor of forebears said to have died of exposure in the valley in
1856.
Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Book News Annotation:It has an unlikely name, the Sweetwater River valley, and it occupies
one of the most rugged of spaces in the rugged state of Wyoming. In
it or near it masses of Native Americans hunted, a woman was hanged,
migrants froze to death, and thousands of pioneers paused at the
valley's Independence Rock on their way to Oregon. Who owned the land
then and owns it now has control of a vast repertoire of American
history. Rea follows the stories of the land and how they changed
according to who owned it, ranging from early settlers to one of the
most prominent early ranchers who was instrumental in the only
lynching of a woman in Wyoming all the way to the present, in which
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints operates a museum in
honor of forebears said to have died of exposure in the valley in
1856.
Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Synopsis:This history of how land--and history itself--became a prize not to be lost in the American West includes 24 black-and-white illustrations and 2 maps. About the AuthorTom Rea is the author of Bone Wars: The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie's Dinosaur, winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for contemporary nonfiction. He lives with his family in Casper, Wyoming. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
Related Aisles
|
||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
Follow us on...
|
|||||||||||||
Don't Miss
