Devil's Gate: Owning the Land, Owning the Story Rating :
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
History with a perceptive twist
By William J Higgins III
At times history can be a Gatling gun of fact and speculation and cause the reader to separate truth from fiction. The underlying theme of Tom Rea's fine work is that given a certain geographical area (in this case Devil's Gate along Wyoming's Sweetwater River), it is the land itself that owns the true stories of space and time. People simply tell them, sometimes to fit their own needs.
Recruiting and interweaving stories from days gone by of this region, whether it be John Fremont mapping the territory, experiences of Oregon Trail emigrants, the Mormon handcarters, mid-nineteenth century Indian wars, Billy Owen's surveying or Hiram Chittenden's engineering for dam sites, to feuds with neighboring ranchers ("Cattle Kate" lynching), water rites, grazing laws, up to the present-day, this is a gifted undertaking of connecting historical meaning.
Enjoyed the stories. Benefited from the insightful viewpoint as well.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Wyoming History
By Mijcor
This books does a good job of summerizing many historic events in Wyoming's past to a very unique and sometimes forgotten place. It was interesting to read accounts of some of these historic events and some not so historic and obscure events and how this country tied into them. It was an enjoyable read of history but also posed an underlying troubling trend today. It is a very interesting "history" book in that aspect.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.Very Worthwhile Reading
By N. Houtz
This well written book provides historical depth on the Oregon Trail as well as interesting reading that gets an important message across about historical truth. Highly recommend it.
Product Description
Devil’s 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 Devil’s 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, Devil’s 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 Martin’s Cove as the site of handcart pioneers who froze to death in the valley in 1856.
The treeless, arid country around Devil’s 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.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #626441 in Books
- Published on: 2013-03-07
- Original language:English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .0" h x.0" w x.0" l,1.05 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
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