Oregon Trail Memorial (Cokeville)

Unlike its 1931 twins at Kemmerer and Green River, this stone stands where the wagons rolled. The main trail came north from Fort Bridger over the Bear River Mountains into this valley, and emigrants coming off the dry country of western Wyoming found it an oasis, several miles wide and green. Diarists camped near Smiths Fork and rested their teams on the grass before following the river northwest toward Soda Springs, and wrote of the valley as farmland waiting for settlers, a quarter century before any came.

What the plaque says

To all pioneers who passed this way to win and hold the West Erected by town of Cokeville, Wyo 1931

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fossil Butte National Monument — 20 mi
  The floor of a 52-million-year-old lake, packed with whole fish, the oldest complete bats and the only complete freshwater stingrays.
• Bear Lake — 21 mi
  The Caribbean of the Rockies — a turquoise lake straddling the Utah-Idaho border
• Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 21 mi
  The Bear River crosses this marsh twice: once in a canal into Bear Lake, and once in another canal on its way back out.
• National Oregon/California Trail Center — 24 mi
  Emigrants came down off Big Hill and camped in the clover here. Brigham Young renamed the town; the trail center brings the camp back in costume.

More markers nearby

• State Boundary Monument (Utah, Idaho and Wyoming) — steps away
• Old Oregon Trail (Cokeville) — 0.6 mi
• Cokeville — 0.6 mi
• Tri State Survey Monument — 7.3 mi