Last updated: May 6, 2026
Place
Devil's Gate Interpretive Site
Photo/ L. Kreutzer
Quick Facts
Location:
Devil’s Gate is at 47600 W WY-220, Alcova, Wyoming – about 5.5 miles southwest of Independence Rock State Historic Site on WY-220, and accessed through the Martin’s Cove Visitors’ Center property.
Significance:
Emigrants enjoyed exploring and inscribing their names at Devil’s Gate, a river-cut cleft through a granite ridge near the famed Independence Rock. Devil’s Gate vicinity was a popular campground for 19th Century travelers and many emigrant graves, most of them now unidentifiable, are located nearby.
Designation:
Within Tom Sun Ranch National Historic Landmark; Historic site on the Mormon Pioneer, California, Oregon, and Pony Express NHTs.
MANAGED BY:
Amenities
3 listed
Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Restroom, Trailhead
Devil’s Gate is a dramatic, V-shaped cleft 370 feet deep and 1,500 feet long, sawed through a granite ridge by the Sweetwater River. Covered wagons drove around via nearby Rattlesnake Pass, but many emigrants returned to explore the geological curiosity. Both men and women scrambled to the ridge-top to take in magnificent views of Sweetwater Valley and perhaps peer over cliff’s edge to the roaring waters below. Some tried to wade the length of the rift, but a blockage midway forced them back.
Brigham Young and companions made the attempt in 1847, jokingly reporting to camp that “the devils would not let them pass.” Sir Richard Burton, traveling by stage in 1860, explained why: Through this wild gorge the bright stream frets and forces her way, singing. . .tumbling and gurgling, dashing and foaming over the snags, blocks, and boulders, which, fallen from the cliffs above, obstruct the way. “Who can gaze on the Sweetwater’s passage through the mountains (called Devil’s Gate) without feelings of the livest emotions?” wondered forty-niner John Edwin Banks. “It is grand, it is sublime!” Missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet suggested in 1841 that it should be called “Heaven’s Avenue” as it opens into a valley of such beauty that “placid happiness steals upon the mind.” Instead of “placid happiness,” some emigrants yearned for excitement. Francis Hardy and friends scaled the perpendicular walls in 1850, un-roped, from inside the rift, seeking small cracks “to afford a slight hold for the ends of our claws.”
They finished the climb barefoot, and “when we got to the top our toes were some sore.” Presumably they found a different route down. Emigrants sometimes reported finding human bones inside the gate and near the summit, and the 1854 journal of Jacob Prickett recounts the Devil’s Gate death of 18-year-old Clark Meeker. While wading the stream, Prickett’s band met Oregon pioneer Ezra Meeker, anxiously seeking his younger brother. They discovered Clark’s body “washed up against the shore” and found his revolver with one empty chamber. Prickett reasoned that Clark had fired his weapon in the cleft to hear the echo, as emigrants loved to do. Then while “jumping from rock to rock, and the surface of some being glassy in their smoothness,” the young man had fallen, struck his head, and drowned in the current. “Probably never before nor since,” wrote Prickett, “has The Devil’s Gate echoed such wails of anguish and grief as were mingled with the ceaseless wailing of its waters on this occasion.” Clark’s grave is one of perhaps 20 in the area, nearly all unmarked, including his.
Enjoy a partial view of Devil’s Gate from Devil’s Gate Historic Site on WY-220, about 5.5 miles southwest of Independence Rock. Then continue west for ¾ mile and turn right to the Martin’s Cove Visitors’ Center. From the center, walk west on Oregon Trail, cross the river on a footbridge, and bear right. Follow the path east along the river for about ½ mile to the head of Devil’s Gate.
Site Information
Location (Devil’s Gate is at 47600 W WY-220, Alcova, Wyoming – about 5.5 miles southwest of Independence Rock State Historic Site on WY-220, and accessed through the Martin’s Cove Visitors’ Center property. )
Amenities
Historical/interpretive information/exhibits; Information kiosk/bulletin board; toilets; scenic view; Parking – Auto, bus/RV; interpretive trail; wheelchair accessible.