Devils Gate sweetwater landmark
— — a slit the river cut and the wagons walked around.
Not only on a wall.
“A 330-foot granite cleft where the Sweetwater River squeezes through the Rattlesnake Hills, six miles southwest of Independence Rock. The Oregon, California, and Mormon Trail emigrants steered their wagons around it rather than through it, and carved their names into the soft rock at Independence Rock instead. The wind comes down the gap and never quite stops. from the studio
Devils Gate sweetwater landmark, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Devils Gate is a narrow gorge cut by the Sweetwater River through a spur of the Granite Mountains in Natrona County, Wyoming, about six miles southwest of Independence Rock along State Highway 220. The cleft is roughly 330 feet deep and 1,500 feet long, with a width of about 30 feet at the river. It was a recognized landmark on the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails from the 1840s through the 1860s, signaling that emigrants had reached the Sweetwater Valley and the easier climb toward South Pass.
The rock is Precambrian granite of the Granite Mountains uplift, roughly 2.6 billion years old, exposed where the Sweetwater River cut down faster than the range rose. The walls show vertical jointing and a coarse pink-grey fabric similar to the Sherman granite farther south. The Sun Ranch, including Tom Sun's 1872 homestead at the mouth of the gap, was acquired by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1996 and is preserved as the Mormon Handcart Historic Site, with Martin's Cove a mile to the west.
The site is open year-round and free. Visitors stop at the Mormon Handcart Historic Site visitors' center at the old Sun Ranch headquarters, where a short interpretive trail leads to a viewpoint at the east end of the gap. The Sweetwater is too rough to wade at the gate itself; the wagon trail ruts visible on the south side of the river are part of the National Historic Trails system administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Martin's Cove, where 145 Mormon handcart pioneers died in November 1856, lies just to the west.