Range Wars

The ranchers had a name for the place, and it was a warning. Non-Mormon stockmen who reached this valley in the 1860s called it Gentile Valley, Mormon usage for anyone outside the church, to tell settlers from Franklin they were not wanted, and the post office they ran would not accept mail addressed to Mound Valley, the Mormon name. The Mormon farmers came anyway in a surge of claims from Franklin in 1871. The farmers won the land, and the stockmen's name stayed on the west side of the Bear River.

What the plaque says

Range Wars Armed cattle ranchers delayed farm settlement here for six years before a permanent farm community was organized in 1872. This kind of conflict occurred in widely scattered western areas when farm crops displaced rangeland. Families of early farm pioneers still occupy holdings here that are well over a century old, although many of them finally have shifted from planting crops to raising cattle after winning their battle against early stock herders. 431 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Black Canyon of the Bear River — 14 mi
  A basalt gorge cut by a river that, most of the year, now runs past it in a pipe.
• Boa Ogoi (Bear River Massacre Site) — 19 mi
  The Northwestern Band bought back the ground where its people were killed in 1863, and is turning farm fields back into the river bottom they knew.
• Soda Springs Geyser — 20 mi
  Drillers looking for hot water for a swimming pool hit cold soda water under pressure. The town put the geyser on a timer.
• Preston and Napoleon Dynamite — 21 mi
  A farm town in the north end of Cache Valley that a former student turned into a set in the summer of 2003, without changing much of anything.

More markers nearby

• Old Delta Sediments — 16 mi
• Red Rock Pass — 17 mi
• John Bidwell — 19 mi
• Bear River Lava — 19 mi