Martin's Cove

About this property

Martin's Cove is a historic site in Wyoming. The 933-acre (3.8 km2) cove is 55 miles (89 km) southwest of Casper, Wyoming, in Natrona County, on the Mormon Trail. It is also part of the North Platte-Sweetwater segment of the Oregon Trail. The Cove was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 8, 1977. Before the cross-country railroad was operational, about 70,000 Mormons traveled the Mormon Trail with almost 6,000 dying along the way. In November 1856, about 600 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) emigrating in the Martin Handcart Company were halted for five days in the Cove by snow and cold on their way to Salt Lake City. The Martin Handcart company had begun its journey on July 28, 1856, which was dangerously late in the season and led to the disaster. Although the number who died in the Cove is unknown, more than 145 members of the Martin Company died before reaching Salt Lake City. A few days before it reached Martin's Cove, the company was met by a small rescue party with food, supplies, and wagons that LDS Church president Brigham Young had sent from Salt Lake City. On November 4, the company and rescuers forded the Sweetwater River and sought shelter in the Cove. That evening a powerful north wind blew the tents to the ground. The tents were set up again, but a blizzard brought heavy snow. The company remained in the camp for five days, unable to proceed due to the snow and cold. A number of the company's cattle died there and were preserved in a frozen state. When the weather warmed on November 9, the company moved on toward Utah. With assistance from the original rescue party and additional rescue parties that met them along the way, the survivors reached Salt Lake City on November 30. Later many other emigrants would pass the Cove on their way to Utah, California, and Oregon along with Pony Express Riders. During the 1870s, Tom Sun, a French-Canadian frontiersman, purchased the area around the Cove and established Tom Sun Ranch. After the LDS Church purchased Sun Ranch in the 1990s it tried to purchase Martin's Cove to operate it as a historic site. In 2002, a congressional bill for the sale of the property passed the House but stalled in the Senate due to worries about the sale of public land to a religious group. The concerns arose mainly because the land includes areas commonly used as campgrounds by emigrant trains, the Pony Express, and other landmarks such as Devil's Gate. As a result, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), part of the Interior Department, negotiated a long-term lease with the LDS Church. It was signed in 2004 and allowed the church to manage and maintain the property for 25 years.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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