Wyoming’s Oldest Hunting Lands, Trapper’s Point

A natural bottleneck occurs in the Wyoming landscape. Migrating animals are concentrated for a few miles

Hunters have been taking advantage of this for thousands of years.

The idea of adjusting a new interstate highway in Wyoming brought in archaeologists to examine the area before work began.

This turned out to be one of the most important finds of ancient people in the state.

Trapper’s Point, just west of Pinedale, Wyoming, has been a crucial interaction site between humans and pronghorn for at least 8,000 years.

After installing wildlife overpasses and underpasses with fencing along a 12‑mile stretch, crossings exceeded 85,000 in three years, with pronghorn using overpasses 90% of the time.

Collisions dropped by over 80%.

The area is called Trappers Point because of how easy it was for native people, up to 8000 years ago or more, to trap and clean their kills right on that spot.

As the white man moved into the area, trapping continued as a way of life with the Indian and the Mountain Man.

You can explore Trapper's Point.

Six miles west of Pinedale along Highway 191, where the Cora Highway intersects to the north, make a left onto the gravel Green River Road to the south and an immediate right across a cattleguard.

Follow the two-track to the top of the knoll and you’ll see two wooden signs, one looking west and marking Trapper’s Point, the site of several mountain man rendezvous during the 1830s, and the second looking east and identifying Gannett Peak and the other main peaks of the Wind River mountains.

From this vantage, you can also see how the Green and New Fork Rivers sweep toward one another and then away, creating an hourglass-shaped strip of land that funnels migrating wildlife into a narrow area.

The Wyoming Department of Transportation has funded the construction of a wildlife overpass to be built in 2011-12 to let migrating deer and antelope safely cross Highway 191.