Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway
— — a canyon that reads its own geology out loud.
Not only on a wall.
“Thirty-four miles of US-20 and WY-789 threaded through a canyon the Wind River cut down to the Precambrian. The walls climb more than 2,500 feet above the road, and signs along the shoulder name the rock layers as the road climbs back through them: Cambrian, Ordovician, Mississippian, and on down. Three tunnels at the south end. A railroad on the opposite bank carrying coal and grain. At the north end of the canyon, at a place called the Wedding of the Waters, the river changes its name to the Bighorn for reasons the early surveyors never quite explained.
Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway, 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.
The Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway is a 34-mile route along US-20 and WY-789 between Shoshoni and Thermopolis, Wyoming. It descends from the Boysen Reservoir dam at the south end, through three highway tunnels, down a canyon the Wind River carved through the south end of the Owl Creek Mountains. Walls reach more than 2,500 feet above the river. The byway crosses the Wind River Indian Reservation along its central reach and is jointly managed with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe line runs the opposite bank.
The canyon walls expose more than 500 million years of stratigraphy in a single drive. Wyoming Geological Survey roadside signs name the layers from top to bottom: Phosphoria, Tensleep, Madison limestone, Bighorn dolomite, Gallatin, Gros Ventre, Flathead sandstone, and at river level the Precambrian basement, granite and gneiss roughly 2.9 billion years old. Geology classes at the University of Wyoming run field trips through the canyon for exactly this reason. The signs are paced so a driver heading north reads back through deep time.
The byway is open year-round but rockfall and ice close lanes occasionally in winter; check Wyoming 511 before driving in shoulder seasons. The three tunnels and narrow shoulders mean RV traffic is slow. Boysen State Park sits at the south entrance; Thermopolis and Hot Springs State Park, with the mineral terraces, sit at the north. Fishing, kayaking, and a permitted whitewater section run the river in summer. The Wind River becomes the Bighorn at the Wedding of the Waters, the conventional north end of the canyon.