Independence Day at Independence Rock

Known as “The Register of the Desert,” there sits in the south-central part of Wyoming a haystack-looking rock—visible for miles, but with climbable, sloping walls—that meant the world to the immigrants who crossed Wyoming Territory on the Oregon trail in the early 1800s. Today it's most commonly called Independence Rock and is a National Historic Site to honor some 350,000 immigrants who used this as their marker of progress and their “postcard” home. Thousands scratched or ca