Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway

Echoes from the Canyon Floor

Before the advent of aerial surveying and sophisticated cartography equipment, navigators had to make an educated guess about how the world was laid out and give names to places so others could locate them. Even though early maps were remarkably accurate, there were still a few places across the globe that people just couldn’t quite figure out. One of these places lay deep in the heart of central Wyoming. Here the same river had two names: the Bighorn River and the Wind River. The Bighorn meets the Wind in a canyon thousands of feet below towering sandstone walls, within a mountain range that obscured the river’s continuous path. Eventually it was discovered that the Bighorn flows from the north, while the Wind streams in from the south, joining together at the “wedding of the waters,” a name given to the place where one river’s journey ends and the other begins. This geographical curiosity is the star of the show on the Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway, a 34-mile route that slices through the rugged canyon land paralleling the rushing Wind River. Reservoir waters as blue as a sapphire contrast with striated rock walls protruding into the sky. Dip in and out of deep mountain canyons and listen for the echoed secrets on the Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway.