The Impassable Canyon - Wind River Highway

To drive through the Wind River Canyon is to perform an act of time travel. Cutting a jagged, 2,500-foot-deep wound through the Owl Creek Mountains between Shoshoni and Thermopolis, this canyon is one of the most geologically significant and visually arresting corridors in North America. For the traveler, it is a twenty-minute scenic bypass; for the geologist, it is a 2.9-billion-year-old record of the earth’s crust; and for the historian, it is a testament to the sheer, stubborn will of humans to bridge the "impassable."

The Stairway to (Geological) Heaven

The story of the canyon begins nearly three billion years ago. As you enter the canyon from the south (the Shoshoni side), you are standing on some of the oldest exposed rock on the planet. These are the Precambrian granites and metamorphic rocks, dark and jagged, dating back approximately 2.9 billion years.

As you drive north toward Thermopolis, the road actually descends in elevation while you "climb" through geological time. Because the rock layers are tilted, you pass through the "Stairway to Heaven,” a sequence of sedimentary layers including the Flathead Sandstone (Cambrian), the Bighorn Dolomite (Ordovician), and the Madison Limestone (Mississippian). By the time you emerge at the northern mouth of the canyon, you have traveled through roughly one-third of the Earth’s entire history.

Ironic Name - The "Wedding of the Waters"

One of the most famous anecdotes of the canyon involves its river. At the northern end of the canyon, there is a marked spot known as the "Wedding of the Waters." Here, the Wind River officially becomes the Big Horn River.

This is not a confluence where two rivers meet. It is the exact same body of water. The name change is a relic of early exploration. Indigenous peoples and early white explorers coming from the south named the river the "Wind River" because it flowed out of the Wind River Mountains. Explorers coming from the north in the Montana territory named the river the "Big Horn" as it flowed through the Big Horn Basin. Neither group realized they were naming the same river until they met in the middle of the canyon. Rather than choosing one name, they compromised with the "Wedding of the Waters," a geographic "divorce" from logic that remains today.

Breaking the Silence (1911)

For thousands of years, the canyon was a barrier. While Indigenous tribes like the Shoshone and Arapaho used the rims for hunting and passage, the canyon floor was considered too treacherous for large-scale travel. The river flooded violently, and the rock walls were prone to massive slides.

The first entity to truly "tame" the canyon was the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad (now BNSF). In 1911, the railroad undertook a Herculean engineering project to lay tracks through the gorge. This required blasting four tunnels through solid Precambrian rock.

The work was brutal. Laborers lived in "tent cities" at both ends of the canyon, enduring scorching summers and sub-zero winters. According to historical accounts highlighted by researchers, the construction was a "man-killer" job. Workers used steam shovels and black powder, often dangling from ropes to set charges in the cliff faces. When the first steam locomotive chuffed through the canyon in late 1911, it ended millions of years of silence in the gorge.

From "Red Road" to Modern Marvel

While the railroad had conquered the canyon floor, motorists were still forced to take a grueling, multi-day detour over Birdseye Pass above the east wall of the canyon where they had to face the infamous “Devil’s Slide” steep grade. It wasn't until the early 1920s that the state of Wyoming began the "impossible" task of building a highway.

Asmus Boysen

The highway's history is inextricably linked to Asmus Boysen, an ambitious (and somewhat controversial) entrepreneur who built a dam at the southern entrance of the canyon in 1908. Boysen’s dam provided power but also created a massive siltation problem that eventually forced the railroad to relocate its tracks higher up the canyon walls. This relocation inadvertently created a "shelf" that the state would later use for an automobile road.

The Three Tunnels

Completed in 1924, the original highway was a narrow, gravel affair. It was widened and paved in the 1930s and 1950s, a process that required the creation of the three iconic highway tunnels at the southern end.

Driving through these tunnels today is a rhythmic experience: a sudden plunge into darkness, a flash of vertical rock through the "windows" cut into the stone, and a return to the blinding Wyoming sun. These tunnels were blasted with such precision that they have required remarkably little structural maintenance over the last seventy years, despite the immense weight of the mountains above them.

Outlaws and Pioneers

The Outlaw Corridor

The canyon was a strategic bottleneck. To the east lay the "Hole-in-the-Wall" country, the famous hideout of Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. Outlaws moving between the Thermopolis hot springs (where they went to heal and relax) and the southern mountain hideouts frequently used the rim trails above the canyon.

Legend has it that a lone outlaw, pursued by a posse from Lander in the 1890s, chose to ride his horse into the roaring Wind River rather than face capture. The horse was found downstream, but the outlaw vanished. Some say he used the river's current to float to a hidden cave in the canyon walls—caves that are still visible today but nearly impossible to reach without professional climbing gear.

The "Ghost" of the 1923 Flood

In 1923, a massive flood swept through the canyon, nearly destroying the construction progress of the new highway and damaging the railroad. During the cleanup, workers found a pocket watch lodged in a rock crevice 40 feet above the normal river level. Inside was a photo of a woman and a child, but no owner was ever found. To this day, local lore suggests that on stormy nights, the "Canyon Watchman" can be heard whistling a low tune near the third tunnel, searching for the watch he lost to the flood.

The Wind River Reservation

Crucially, the southern portion of the canyon lies within the Wind River Reservation, home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. For these nations, the canyon is more than a scenic route; it is a sovereign territory and a place of spiritual significance.

The tribes have long managed the river's resources, including the world-class trout fishing and the white-water rafting industry. When you drive through the canyon, you are a guest on tribal land. The preservation of the canyon’s wild feel is largely thanks to the tribal councils' commitment to limiting commercial development within the gorge itself.

The Canyon Today: What to Look For

Today, U.S. 20/Wyoming 789 is a designated Scenic Byway. For the modern traveler, the canyon offers several "must-see" features:

• The Pillars of Hercules: Massive limestone towers that seem to pinch the sky.
• The Chimney Rock: Natural erosional feature that looks like the smokestacks of a sunken city.
• White Water: The river drops over 200 feet in elevation as it traverses the canyon, creating Class II and III rapids that are popular for guided rafting trips.
• Bighorn Sheep: The canyon is a premier habitat for Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep. It is not uncommon to see a ram standing regally on a rock ledge just feet from the highway.

Bibliography

• Cook, Myron. You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/@myroncook
• Dorothy, Jackie. "The Engineering Marvel of Wind River Canyon." Cowboy State Daily, 2023.
• Dorothy, Jackie. "Outlaws of the Owl Creeks." Pioneers of Outlaw Country Podcast/Blog Series, 2022.
• Mears, Brainerd. The Geology of Wyoming. University of Wyoming Press, 2001. (Detailed breakdown of the Precambrian-to-Madison sequences in the canyon).
• Athearn, Robert G. Union Pacific Country. University of Nebraska Press, 1971. (Context on the CB&Q railroad expansion into the Big Horn Basin).
• Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT). Historic Roads and Bridges of Wyoming: Wind River Canyon Tunnels.
• Washakie Museum & Cultural Center. Archives of the Big Horn Basin: The Wedding of the Waters.