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Wyoming’s Founding Figures

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Exposed: Pre-territorial Photography in Wyoming, 1843-1867

Less than three years after French painter Louis Daguerre shared with the world how to make pictures on polished sheets of silver-plated copper, Lt. John C. Fremont attempted to photograph the land we think of as Wyoming. The early photographers of Wyoming adapted new technology to rough terrain and unforgiving elements.

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Bissonette’s North Platte River Post

From 1850 to 1854, fur trader and interpreter Joseph Bissonette ran an independent trading post on the North Platte River, serving emigrants and Lakota bands alike. He later worked as a ferryman, bridge partner, and government official through the Oregon Trail’s final violent years.

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Bissonette’s Deer Creek Post

Fur trader Joseph Bissonette built a bustling trading post at the mouth of Deer Creek in 1857—a crossroads of commerce, diplomacy and scandal that hosted Lutheran missionaries, Pony Express riders and a wary military garrison before Indian wars reduced it to ashes in 1865.

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Seminoe’s Post

In 1852, Charles Lajeunesse built a trading post at Devil’s Gate, funneling all Sweetwater Valley emigrant traffic past his door. Abandoned by 1856, its ruins sheltered the stranded Martin Handcart Company that winter. Lost for a century, the site was rediscovered and rebuilt in 2001.

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Archambault’s Post

Along the Sweetwater River near Independence Rock, Archambault’s Post traded with emigrants and Native peoples through the 1850s, its history tangled with the neighboring Seminoe’s Post. Abandoned by 1856, it briefly sheltered Mormon handcart emigrants stranded that fall in a killing snowstorm.

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Pre-territorial Photography in Wyoming, 1843-1867
Bissonette’s North Platte River Post
Bissonette’s Deer Creek Post
Seminoe’s Post
Archambault’s Post

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“To the Utmost of Her Power:” Consent, Force, and an 1897 Wyoming Court Case

In 1896, a Fremont County jury convicted Thomas Tway of sexually assaulting Julia Stevens. A year later, the Wyoming Supreme Court threw out the verdict, ruling that she hadn’t resisted “to the utmost of her power.” The court’s assumptions about how a victim should behave still echo today.

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newspaper clipper headlined, "SHOT WAS THOMAS P. TWAY. Two Shot Revceived in the Right Leg, And Rode 65 Miles To Have HIs Wounds Dressed."

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