Seeds-Kee-Dee Agie, Spanish River, Rio Verde, Green River

The prairie chicken of the board's translation is the sage grouse, still the bird of these sagebrush benches, and the trappers carried the Shoshone name into English as Seedskadee. The river behind the board is no longer the one they trapped. Fontenelle Dam, begun in June 1961 and finished in April 1964, backed the Green into the reservoir here, and the next year water seeping through cracks in its right abutment forced repairs. In 1965 the Fish and Wildlife Service answered the lost habitat with a refuge downstream and gave it the Shoshone name.

What the plaque says

To the Shoshone Indian, this river was the Seeds-Kee-Dee Agie (Prairie Chicken River). On Sept. 16, 1811 the Astorians near its headwaters termed it the Spanish River. To the Spaniards far to the south it was the Rio Verde (Green River). Jedediah Smith and his ten mountain men, making the first westward crossing of the South Pass by white men, camped near here Mar. 19 1824 on the Seeds-Kee-Dee. They trapped the river and its forks which were named for them; Labarge, Ham's, Black's, Smith's, Henry's etc. These waters were considered as the greatest beaver waters ever known. The upper reaches became the center of the fur trade and Rendezvous. In 1841 the fur trade had ceased but the trappers had blazed the trails for emigrants. For forty-nine years over the Oregon and California trails thousands of emigrants going west, crossed these waters near by. The many that drowned and died were buried along the river banks. The mountain men guided, manned the ferries, and traded with the emigrants. Graves, marked and unmarked, names cut in the rocks, and wagon trails worn deep, remain with the legend and lore of a great river of the west, The Green. Sublette County Historical Society U.S. Bureau of Land Management Lincoln County Board of Commissioners U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Names Hill State Historic Site — 4.2 mi
  The Sublette Cutoff's register cliff above the Green River crossing, where the most famous name, Jim Bridger's, is probably not his.

More markers nearby

• James Bridger — 4.2 mi
• Names Hill — 4.2 mi
• Oregon Trail Memorial (Kemmerer) — 29 mi
• Coal Miner Memorial — 30 mi