Castle Rock

The board credits Colter with discovering this later named Shoshone River, but the stinking water was a name before it was a map label, a translation by most accounts of the Crow name for the sulfur springs at the mouth of Shoshone Canyon. It held for nearly a century. On February 14, 1901, with Cody newly founded downstream, the Wyoming Legislature renamed the river for the Shoshone, and the federal names board followed within weeks. Cody's boosters had argued that the old name would keep visitors away.

What the plaque says

Castle Rock John Colter, famed among the famous breed of "Mountain Men," passed this landmark late in the fall of 1807 while on business for the fur trader Manuel Lisa. Searching for Indians in order to conduct trade, he also hunted salt caves reputedly located near headwaters of this stream then known as the "stinking water." On his journey Colter not only discovered this later named Shoshone River but he also became the first recorded white man to visit the upper Wind River, Jackson's Hole and Yellowstone park. His lonely trek, compounding the normal dangers of savage wilderness by mid winter passage of a broad and lofty mountain range, lives in history and legend an epic of courageous exploration.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Trail Town — 14 mi
  Bob Edgar's rescued log buildings, outlaw cabins and an Apsáalooke scout's home among them, rebuilt on the ground where Cody City was first laid out.
• Buffalo Bill Center of the West — 15 mi
  A memorial begun the year Buffalo Bill died that grew, wing by stone-walled wing, into five museums and a library under one roof.
• Heart Mountain Interpretive Center — 27 mi
  The incarcerated cleared and watered the land; when the camp closed it went to veterans to homestead, and the barracks sold for a dollar each.

More markers nearby

• Shoshone Canyon — 12 mi
• Colter's Hell — 13 mi
• Wyoming Vietnam Veterans Memorial — 16 mi