Wyoming, Uinta County, Fort Bridger
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Beginning as a Wyoming Centennial project in 1990, archaeologists from Western Wyoming College have been working to uncover the physical remains of 19th century life at Fort Bridger. As the fort evolved over time, from an emigrant supply station, to an outpost of Mormon settlement, to a major military post, to a settled agricultural community, the needs of those who lived at the fort changed.
As a result, the physical layout of the post was constantly being altered as buildings were added, modified, torn down, or moved. Architectural remnants from these successive occupations have been uncovered and stabilized at the archaeological site just south of the museum - the building directly in front of you.
Architectural Evolution at This Excavation
• A log trading post, run by famous mountain man Jim Bridger and his partner Louis Vasquez, stood on this site from 1843-1853.
• During the Mormon occupation, the trading post was enclosed by a massive cobblestone wall, completed in 1857.
• The 1867 photo above captures the deteriorating Mormon Wall and the earliest structures built by the army. Soldiers pose in front of the commissary building, which you can see today as the middle building in front of you.
• The other buildings inside the Mormon Wall and the remains of the wall itself were eventually removed by the army to make room for the 1880 barracks, which presently houses the museum.
(Forts, Castles • Science & Medicine) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
Beginning as a Wyoming Centennial project in 1990, archaeologists from Western Wyoming College have been working to uncover the physical remains of 19th century life at Fort Bridger. As the fort evolved over time, from an emigrant supply station, to an outpost of Mormon settlement, to a major military post, to a settled agricultural community, the needs of those who lived at the fort changed. As a result, the physical layout of the post was constantly being altered as buildings were added, modified, torn down, or moved. Architectural remnants from these successive occupations have been uncovered and stabilized at the archaeological site just south of the museum - the building directly in front of you.
Architectural Evolution at This Excavation
• A log trading post, run by famous mountain man Jim Bridger and his partner Louis Vasquez, stood on this site from 1843-1853.
• During the Mormon occupation, the trading post was enclosed by a massive cobblestone wall, completed in 1857.
• The 1867 photo above captures the deteriorating Mormon Wall and the earliest structures built by the army. Soldiers pose in front of the commissary building, which you can see today as the middle building in front of you.
• The other buildings inside the Mormon Wall and the remains of the wall itself were eventually removed by the army to make room for the 1880 barracks, which presently houses the museum.
(Forts, Castles • Science & Medicine) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
The post commissary, erected in 1867, measured 28' x 100' and was built of cut stone quarried about two miles west of the fort. A portion of the old cobblerock Mormon Wall was utilized to form a section of the building's north wall. 
Built in 1868 of quarried limestone slabs, this guardhouse was a replacement for the not-so-secure log guardhouse that stood fifty yards north of here. With walls 2' thick, the exterior dimensions were 24' x 58'. The height of the roof went from 10' at the eve to 16' at the top of the pitch. 
From the late 1840s through the 1860s, an exodus of more than 70,000 Mormons passed by here on their way to their "New Zion" in Utah. Starting from Nauvoo, Illinois in February 1846, the first group of at least 13,000 Mormons crossed into Iowa to escape religious persecution, then spent the next winter in the area of present-day Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska.
In 1847, Brigham Young led an advance party of 143 men, 2 women, and 3 children along the Platte River. At Fort Bridger, Wyoming they departed from the Oregon Trail to head southwest to the Great Salt Lake. Thousands of other Mormons soon followed. Today, a marked 1,624-mile auto tour route closely parallels their historic trek.
From 1856-60, many European converts walked more than 1,200 miles to Salt Lake City pushing and pulling handcarts (right) loaded with 500 pounds of supplies After 1860, the Mormon church sponsored oxen-drawn wagons to bring emigrants to the "New Zion".
In 1938, during the New Deal Era, the Works
Progress Administration (WPA) constructed the
park's first resources The roadside park began
with the construction of the stone picnic shelter
fireplace grills, an overlook
two trails, the water
system, the stone entrance, signs along Route 52,
the dry stone retaining wall and parking area.
Today the park of 396 a 15 acre
lake, an interpretive Room, and over seven miles of trails.
Jordan Nelson, blacksmith, dug coal from bank to fuel forge, and made 1st commercial use by selling for 1 cent a bushel in 1870s. In 1873 I. A. Welch surveyed Pocahontas Coalfield for J. Hotchkiss who induced F. J. Kimball, later President of N&W Railroad, to visit site May 1881. Southwest Virginia Improvement Company bought land and opened Pocahontas Mine and shipped coal over N&W’s New River Line built to open coalfield.
Original Site of the
U.S. Post Office and Store
Minnesela
So. Dak.
1882 - 1901
Pocahontas Cemetery was created after the 13
Mar. 1884 explosion in the Pocahontas East Mine
that claimed the lives of at least 14 miners.
Not until a month later were bodies recovered
from the mine and buried together in what
became the town’s first cemetery. Later interments, often grouped by ethnic and religious
heritage, reflect the rich diversity of the
Pocahontas community. Some
gravestones bear
inscriptions in Hungarian, Italian, and
Russian, while others display the symbols of
the Russian Orthodox faith. The broad array
of European inspired funerary art at the
Pocahontas Cemetery is one of the best in the state.
West Virginia
(Mercer County).
"The Mountain State"—western
part of the Commonwealth of
Virginia until June 20, 1863.
Settled by the Germans and
Scotch-Irish. It became a line
of defense between the English
and French during the French
and Indian War, 1754-1763.
Here at dawn on 20 July 1863 the Confederate cavalry of Maj. Andrew J. May surprised a
Union raiding party led by Lt. Col. Freeman E.
Franklin. Aroused from its bivouac in Brown’s
Meadow, where it was preparing to burn the
Falls Mill, the Union cavalry fled north toward
Abb’s Valley. Brig. Gen. John S. Williams’s
Confederate cavalry struck the raiders as they
withdrew up the valley, compelling them to abandon captured livestock and contraband slaves.
The upriver ports of Carthage and Kelsey's Landing were stopping places for boats bound for Canada. Escaped slaves arrived in Rochester via the "Underground Railroad" and looked for a friendly captain to take them across the lake and deliver them to freedom. 
Named for an early town of the Munsee Delawares, which occupied the flats south of the present town. In 1760 Munsees under Papoonhank welcomed Post here, on his way toward a great Indian council beyond Allegheny River.
