Harrower Peak in the northern Wind River Range of Wyoming is a rugged, remote mountain that rises dramatically over the surrounding wilderness, offering breathtaking views and a challenging climb for adventurous hikers.
This summit was named for Jim Harrower, a 1920s backcountry ranger, mayor of Pinedale and early conservationist and Wyoming historian. He had cleared the trails in the Wind River Range since he was a teenager and discovered the old routes the pioneers had once taken by reading their old diaries and coming across their crumbling graves.
He also was instrumental in passing the Wilderness Act of 1964 to protect federal wilderness areas.
“He had a deep connection to Wyoming,” grandson Heath Harrower told Cowboy State Daily. “He was a man ahead of his times in terms of both preservation and conservation. Many of the things that we enjoy today, from access to untouched lands to the Museum of the Mountain Man, we have thanks in part to his efforts.”
Harrower’s legacy was his outdoor contributions and preserving Wyoming’s history. As a young park ranger, he visited remote locations that still had the remnants of the early pioneers and faithfully recorded what he saw.
“Dad got to witness the Oregon Trail as to where it was at that time,” Jim’s son Bob Harrower said. “He was not far removed from the pioneer days. Different things were still in existence when he was young such as the location of the blacksmith's shop over the Weatherspoon Pass.
“Another example was a cemetery that is now nonexistent up by Green River Lakes. In the late 1920s, he copied the names of the people that were in the cemetery and those headstones are now obliterated.”
From Coal Dust To Park Ranger
James King Harrower was the son of a coal miner and Scottish emigrants. Born in 1905, he grew up covered in coal dust as one of eight children in remote Diamondville, Wyoming, a town founded by his family.
As a youngster, he would go to the mines after school and bring home a bag of coal to heat the house. Making a living mining coal underground did not appeal to Harrower, who loved Wyoming’s wide-open spaces and a life under the blue sky.
While in high school, Harrower worked for the U.S. Forest Service, spending summers in the mountains maintaining trails. With two pack horses, he would depart Kemmerer near the Hams Fork, work his way through the Wyoming Range, cross on the north side of the Hoback Canyon, and work his way south through the Wind River Range until reaching the Big Sandy opening.
He would then cross the desert and make his way back to Kemmerer.
“He was by himself and no entertainment,” son Bob said. “He became well-educated with the books that he carried with him and the opportunity he had to study the trees and the plants and the wildlife.”
A Life Outdoors
Harrower graduated from high school in 1924 and did a short stint in the military. An injury forced him out and he moved back to Wyoming, where the outdoors once more beckoned.
He again joined the Forest Service and, while at a dance in La Barge, Jim met his future wife, Alice Morrow. The young couple moved to the Willow Creek Guard Station near Cora, where they lived for several years and began their own family.
“Growing up under his guidance, we did everything involving the outdoors,” Bob told Cowboy State Daily. “Now we call it protecting the environment, but then it was a continuous lifestyle, not a vacation or a weekend or an after-work thing. If we were going somewhere, we'd stop along the road and he cleared trails because that was his life.”
Harrower raised his children at his remote assignment at Willow Creek without any roads. When the kids reached school age, the family moved into Pinedale.
“It was a very isolated,” Bob said. “I think all small towns in Wyoming were like that at that time. Going through the end of the depression, everybody suffered somewhat and everybody helped everybody else at that time. It was just a way of life rather than a favor.
“When I was young, the roads to Pinedale were not even paved. Everybody traded rather than used money. An elk hind quarter for a fence post or whatever, because we didn't have a lot of outside influence until the government put a large CCC camp close by.”
Left, Jim Harrower’s primary means of transportation while a Forest Ranger living at Willow Creek Guard Station in the winter was snowshoes. He continued using these as a Game Warden where he would travel for three days from Pinedale to the Upper Green River elk feed ground, stopping first at the Alexander Ranch and then the Steward Ranch prior to reaching the feed ground to check on two associates that remained at the feed ground all winter. Right, Harrower with Al Allard of the U.S. Geological Service conducting a mapping expedition within the Wind River Mountains. (Courtesy Photo) 
19. Jim Harrower placing an Oregon Trail marker. (Courtesy Photo) 
Dr. Olaus Murie, Jim Harrower Jr. and Jim Harrower getting antelope for a Smithsonian exhibit. (Courtesy Photo) 
Jim Harrower reintroducing elk on the Red Desert and creating what is now known as the Red Desert or Jack Morrow herd. This is now reported as the largest herd of “desert” elk in the world. (Courtesy Photo) 
Jim Harrower used a snow plane to make this trip. He is pictured in Cora with a Wyoming Game and Fish snow plane headed to the Green River Lakes feed ground. (Courtesy Photo) 
Jim Harrower tagging a moose for a wildlife study. Related correspondence also reveals Jim’s assistance within elk studies as the Wyoming Game and Fish attempted to ascertain any correlation between antler size and age on bull elk as well as their migratory habits. (Courtesy Photo) 
Jim Harrower and associates with a small sled they used to feed elk. (Courtesy Photo) 
Prior to the formal establishment of the current elk feed ground system, Jim Harrower, with pilot Roland Barry, would feed elk from the air using this airplane. Note the bales attached to each wing that Jim and Roland would cut open during flight. (Courtesy Photo) 
Forest fire in what is now the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Until at least the 1950s, high school kids were taken out of school to assist with hauling and assembling equipment to assist in firefighting. (Courtesy Photo)
CCC Camp
Harrower became the manager of the new Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp and was looked to as a father figure by all the “boys” who had arrived from the big cities to this remote outpost in Pinedale far from their homes.
“They were all young men that were out of work, mainly from the Eastern part of the United States, and as I recall, each man got paid a dollar a day to be a CCC,” Bob said. “That dollar was either sent home to the family or sometimes was even spent in Pinedale, which was a boon to the local establishments, whether it was selling a soda or a new pair of shoes or something like that.”
The CCC camps brought the modern life to Pinedale with the building of roads and campgrounds that still exist today.
“It was a life very similar to military,” Bob said. “They would have reveille in the morning. They wore uniforms and lived in barracks with a big chow hall. The main camp was at Fremont Lake, and I think it may have had up to 500 young men at one time.”
Harrower worked side-by-side with his boys, even fighting forest fires when needed.
“They learned how to work together and many of them learned how to operate equipment,” Bob remembered. “They had the old D-4 caterpillar and cut the trees down and cleared the roads and hauled rocks and built cattle guards. It was quite an industrious group.”
The Disruption Of World War II
When Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II, the camp disbanded and the young men were sent to war.
“My family kept track of as many of the boys during their military career,” Bob said. “Some were heroes, and others just average old Joes like the rest of us.”
Much to his chagrin, Harrower was unable to enlist with his CCC boys to fight in the war. His brothers had already enlisted, and he was told he was needed on the home front.
“He attempted to go to the military, but they wouldn't have them because of the children and the thing about having all the brothers in one war,” Bob said. “He did like most of the people did after the CCC left, which was whatever job you could find. He worked first at the railroad in Rock Springs, which is 100 miles away. I think that was a source of a lot of employment for the out of out of work people.
“He struggled for several years to find a job to provide for the family. Since he had been with the forest for so many years, he got on with the Wyoming Game and Fish.”
Elk Controversy
In this position, Harrower faced opposition from those who didn’t quite agree with his methods, especially when it came to maintaining the elk herds and wild sheep in Wyoming during the 1940s and ’50s.
“He was in direct competition with the cattle people in the whole state because he was of the opinion that the elk needed to eat, too,” Bob said. “He fed the elk by airplane, which did not make the Game and Fish in Cheyenne very happy.”
During this time, Harrower also reintroduced elk to the Red Desert where they still roam today.
“He's the one that decided there should be elk out on the desert,” Bob said. “His theory was that originally the elk were a desert animal and had been pushed out of the desert to the mountains and were being pushed out of the mountains by the livestock industry.
“He was always in turmoil with private livestock growers. And of course, they had a great influence on the government out of Cheyenne.”
It wasn’t just the cattlemen who objected to Harrower’s advocacy and management style with Wyoming’s wildlife.
“He's always in a battle, whether it was to transplant sheep from Nevada to Wyoming or something else,” Bob said. “The sheepmen objected to that. At one time, he thought they could run wild near Pinedale, Wyoming, and that idea didn't turn out very well with the livestock interests.”
Harrower was a game warden for a number of years before he once more began clearing trails. He continued to study the butterflies and fauna of Wyoming from books and even discovered a new species of butterfly that now bears his name. The harrowi named after Harrower is a subspecies of the giant sulphur that lives in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Oregon.
“My mother accompanied him on many trips into the mountains with pack horses,” Bob said. “At that time, he became a private contractor. He built many houses and was a very good stonemason.”
Jim Harrower maintaining and building trails in the Wind River Mountains in the late 1920s. (Courtesy Photo) 
Jim Harrower and an unknown associate maintaining and establishing trails in the upper Green River Valley in the 1920s. As there were no roads in this area and few automobiles, wagons were used to transport equipment as far as practical. (Courtesy Photo) 
The original Willow Creek Guard Station, left, was torn down and replaced in the early 1930s. Jim Harrower lived here with his family year-round. (Courtesy Photo) 
20. Christmas note from President Truman and the artist Thomas Benton to Jim Harrower that shows the mural within the Truman Presidential Library to which Jim Harrower provided historical consultation. (Courtesy Photo) 
Left, Jim Harrower’s 1938 Rendezvous souvenir. Right, a description of another of Jim Harrower’s efforts to capture and memorialize the history of Wyoming. (Courtesy Photo) 
Emigrant grave marker constructed by Jim Harrower. (Courtesy Photo) 
Emigrant grave marker set by Jim Harrower and associates. (Courtesy Photo)
Preserving Wyoming’s History
With his intimate knowledge of Wyoming trails, Harrower lobbied to protect the Oregon Trail, immigrant graves and South Pass City. He helped found the Rendezvous pageant in Pinedale, the Museum of the Mountain Man and became the president of the local historical society.
“He was informed greatly by his time as a forest ranger and as a game warden,” grandson Heath said. “His knowledge came from spending that much time in the mountains.”
Since he was a teenager, Harrower recorded these sites and fading trails. He learned of them through reading diaries and stumbling upon their remote markers before time erased them forever.
One such grave marker was of an emigrant mother who died in childbirth in 1862. The grieving family had marked the grave with a black walnut board with her name, Elizabeth Paul. Before time and vandals destroyed her grave, Harrower marked it first with another wooden monument in 1937, and then with a cement marker in 1962.
“Just in looking through some of the historical committee notes and articles, we know he was responsible for marking at least 400 sites around the county,” Heath said. “They range from the very visible road stops and researching and writing those narratives of the big historical markers, down to the marking of various immigrant and Indian graves that are well off the beaten path and probably very few people know about today, but still had a stone marker out in the middle of nowhere.”
Harrower died doing what he loved best. He was up at South Pass documenting the old trails and erecting monuments when he died in the Wyoming wilderness he was so passionate about protecting.
As time marches on, Harrower’s own monument, Harrower Peak, remains as a testimony to one man’s desire to protect both Wyoming’s wilderness and its history.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
