Built in 1832 near the Green River, Fort Bonneville was Wyoming’s first trading post, though mountain men mocked it as “Fort Nonsense.” Its real legacy was proving wagons could cross South Pass.
“I knew we had to do something really quick. I was ready to lay down in front of a probably D17 [bulldozer] to stop that thing,” said George Frison, head of the anthropology department at the University of Wyoming. Read about the artifact-rich archaeological site Frison was prepared to defend: Powars II at Sunrise, Wyoming.
Recent, surprising discoveries including a prehistoric village in the Wind River Range above Dubois, Wyo., suggest humans—most likely ancestors of today’s Shoshone people—lived high-mountain lives as long as 10,000 years ago.