First Holy Mass in Wyoming

The Mass here was said in the open air on a Sunday, and it was the French-Canadian trappers in the congregation who named the place when it ended: La Prairie de la Messe, the Prairie of the Mass. The carved granite cross came in 1925, and a half-moon chapel of native rock, about fourteen feet across under a wooden roof, was built around it; the 1940 bronze for the centenary is set into its wall. The site went onto the National Register in 1970 as the first Catholic Mass in what is now Wyoming.

What the plaque says

Commemorating hundredth anniversary of the first Mass by Father P. J. De Smet July 5 1840 Dedicated by the Most Reverend P. A. McGovern, D. D. July 4 1940 Holy Mass was offered here for the first time in Wyoming by Father De Smet July 5 1840

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of the Mountain Man — 9.7 mi
  Six fur-trade rendezvous met near here on the Green; the only artist who ever saw one, Alfred Jacob Miller, came in 1837.

More markers nearby

• Pinckney W. Sublette — steps away
• Narcissa Prentiss Whitman and Eliza Hart Spalding — 1.4 mi
• Green River Rendezvous — 1.4 mi
• The Prairie of the Mass — 2.1 mi