She Wanted A Marker For Wyoming’s 1838 Rendezvous And Created An Outdoor Museum

In Riverton, you can now take a walk through America's unique mountain man heritage all year-round.

Every summer, the 1838 Mountain Man Rendezvous is reenacted on the original meeting spot along the Wind River. It's considered by many an important part of Wyoming’s heritage and has been preserved in its natural state. 

That was why local resident Cathy Cline was surprised by the lack of recognition when she realized that there wasn’t a roadside sign telling people about the 1838 Rendezvous the rest of the year. 

“It's an important place that you can see it right off the highway,” Cline said. “You can be in the same place that the rendezvous happened and feel that history around you.”

Not one to sit still when work needed to be done, Cline started figuring out the process of how to honor the site with a proper roadside marker. This led her, a team of volunteers and multiple organizations to a bigger sign project that would highlight more of Riverton’s historic stories than just the era of the mountain man. 

The result of her research led to a series of fourteen historical signs that line part of the Wyoming Heritage Trail, a section of the old railroad tracks that had previously been transformed into a 22-mile trail stretching from Riverton to Shoshoni. 

These exhibits are the history of Riverton in both print and in audio. The project is called the Wind River Country History: Riverton Tour, and it starts on the trail at Sunset Avenue and Federal Boulevard. The tour includes the graphic displays as well as a corresponding narrated audio tour.

“We are marrying a history experience with an outdoor experience,” Cline said about the network of signs. “You get to enjoy the fresh air and then you bring in this cultural layer on top of it that really enriches that experience.”

Cline said that the new exhibits create an outdoor history museum that invites people to immerse themselves in the history of Riverton. The stories are what makes the displays so special to Cline and those that helped her shape the project. 

“I think for folks outside of Riverton, what’s unique about this is that we are taking the museum out of the museum,” Cline said. 

Riverton’s History

The exhibits range from the story of an ancient ocean to the homesteaders who arrived between 1905 and World War II. Cline had the help of historians statewide as she researched the stories that would best highlight Riverton. 

“You actually can't tell everything there is to tell,” Cline said. “But I did want it to have a chronological flow.”

She started with geology and paleontology before next moving on to the history of the first recorded people. These stories were then narrated for the audio tour by Shoshone tribal member State Rep. Ivan Posey, D-Fremont County, and Arapaho tribal member Cy Lee. 

“It was really important to set the tribes as a foundation to the stories,” Cline said. “We talk about how this was a hunting ground.”

As people walk the trail, the next exhibit tells the story of the trappers and traders who came into the region in the 1830s. Most of these stories were then recorded by Ernie Over for the audio version of the tour.

“It was such a dangerous life,” Cline said. “The trapper’s story is a story of survival.”  

As Cline’s stories moved closer into the present and began telling the story of the founding of Riverton and the early homesteaders, she ran into a roadblock. 

“That was quite a challenge because while the museum had all these photographs, what I really wanted was a diary,” Cline said. “I wanted a homesteader’s actual words to say what life was like.”

Becoming Personal

Cline was at a loss until her cousin stepped in. Although Cline herself has only lived in Riverton for the past decade, her grandparent’s had homesteaded the area in the 1930s. 

“My cousin Dale sent me a story that my uncle Don had put down to paper, and it told about their first three years in this area,” Cline said. “Their first year was 1949 that had an extremely bad winter when they had to airdrop feed for the cattle.”

Cline had never heard these stories before, and it connected her more than ever to her history signage project as she was able to share her own family’s story of homesteading near the present-day Boysen Reservoir 

“They had an open-air jeep, and the second year was freezing,” Cline said. “There were multiple days that that the temperature did not come above minus 50 degrees in the heart of the day.”

Despite the hardships and losing crops for three years in a row, Cline’s uncle persisted and farmed the area for 25 years.

“The story he wrote was perfect because I really wanted the words from the actual people,” Cline said. “It says so much about the hardships people went through it to build our community, and their perseverance.”

Uncovering The Untold Stories

There were other stories that Cline discovered that gave her more insight into Riverton’s past and how the early settlers were able to eke out a living in this remote country.

For instance, while researching the railroad and the tie hacks, Cline discovered details of how families survived the Depression years in Riverton. This tidbit of history caught the imagination of not only Cline but one of her narrators, Jack Schmidt. He had recorded the audio tour of the tie hack story that went with the signs. 

“I didn't realize that the company fed not only their employees, but the whole community,” Schmidt said. “It makes the history of this area come alive when you learn stuff like that.” 

Cline agreed with this sentiment. 

“In the 1930s, during the Depression, when nobody had money and people were starving, those meals were really important,” Cline said. “It was interesting to me how all these historical events integrated with each other and how one event builds on the next.” 

After telling the story of the homesteaders, the signs move visitors along to the train depot.

“This is where we talk about transportation,” Cline said. “We talk about the trains and airplanes, and we talk about the saving of the depot.”

The Power Of Stories

Cline was mindful that it was stories that truly illustrate the building of Riverton so shared actual incidents rather than statistics and stale facts. She explained how rather than being demolished, the depot was saved as first a series of shops and offices by a newly formed organization that would become the Riverton Depot Foundation and then transformed into a restaurant.  

The next topic of interest on the new displays is air service and the important role that Riverton played in its evolution in the Cowboy State.  

“Wyoming's first flight happened in Riverton on the city's fifth year anniversary,” Cline said. “The same man who surveyed the town, flew his new plane across Federal Boulevard, 50 feet in the air.”

Another interesting story Cline unearthed was about Riverton’s first airstrip in 1919. Visitors were arriving in a plane, and the townspeople had to act quickly to give them a place to land.

“About 100 citizens go up on the hill with picks, shovels and a horse drawn road grader and cleared the sagebrush,” Cline said. “They created a landing strip and about noon the same day, the plane comes in.”

She described how the people were so excited that they charged the plane, heedless of the still turning propellers.

One of the final stories Cline shares is about the immigrants who quietly farmed the land around Riverton. She especially highlighted the Germans who had fled Russia prior to the Bolshevik Revolution. 

“I wanted to tell that story, knowing that those people are here and they're just hidden amongst everybody,” Cline said. “You would never know because that history is so long past.”

Outdoor Museum

Before any stories could be told, Cline had to line up funding to make it all happen. In the end, $58,000 was raised to build the signs and share the stories of Riverton’s past. 

The Riverton Depot Foundation acted as the non-profit project sponsor and fiscal partnerships followed with the City of Riverton, Wind River Visitor Council, and the Riverton Rotary Club. 

“That funding allowed us to apply for a grant from the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund who basically doubled our money,” Cline said. 

She also said that in-kind services then came from the Fremont County's Riverton Museum, City of Riverton Public Works, Wyoming Historical Society, WyoHistory.org, tribal historical preservation offices, and Wyoming PBS.

Cline is hopeful that the exhibits lining the trail, and corresponding audio tour, will give visitors just another reason to stop in Riverton. Cline and her team of volunteers said it is not just about preserving Riverton’s history but about promoting tourism and economic development for the future. 

“So many people drive through this town every day and don’t even slow down,” Schmidt said. “These stories could help them slow down just for a minute and experience our past.” 

Cline is also reaching out to the local schools to get the students on the trail so that they, too, can step back into Riverton’s history. She adds that there are gaps in the history she presented and is hoping that others will step up and add to the signs lining the trail. 

“I really hope people will see a little bit of themselves,” Cline said. “There’s still many stories that need to be told.” 

Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.