Names Hill, located on the west side of Highway 189 about 5 miles south of LaBarge, is a very important location, being on the west side of the Green River where thousands of people made a crossing and camped before going on to Immigrant Springs and on down into Utah. Hundreds of names had been carved in the rocks: many of them now have crumbled away. The most famous is James Bridger. To protect it a fences has been placed around it and a marker placed next to it which reads:

“He little knew that when he cut his name, or had it cut, in this stone, that it would be engraved in the annals of the West deeper than that of any other man. As one of the world’s outstanding explorers he guided emigrants, railroads and army in the expansion of the nation”

Nineteenth Century railroads were dependent upon coal for fuel. The vast coal reserves of southern Wyoming helped determine the route of the transcontinental Union Pacific Railroad and were the basis for Wyoming’s first energy boom. Communities sprang up along the line and several with coal deposits or rail facilities survived. Coal mines were opened in the surrounding Bear River Valley in 1868. Dreams of prosperity lured miners from England, Scandinavia, China, and from throughout the United States to settle in “Wyoming Camp”, which later became Almy. Named for James T. Almy, a clerk for the Rocky Mountain Coal Company and located three miles northwest of Evanston, Almy was strung out along the Bear River for 5 miles. This particular “string-town” owed its existence soley to coal mining. Her 4,000 residents suffered more than their share of mining tragedies. On March 4, 1881, the first mine explosion west of the Mississippi to claim lives, killed 38 men in just one of many serious disasters to strike Almy. In January of 1886, 13 more died and on March 20, 1895, the third worst mine explosion in Wyoming history, claimed the lives of 61 men. The state Coal Mine Inspector determined the Almy mines “among the most dangerous in the state”. Finally, in 1900 the mines were closed by the Union Pacific due to labor troubles and explosions. Almy lost its principal industry, the population dwindled and the town suffered the fate of many railroad coal towns throughout Wyoming.

“To the Shoshone Indian, this river was the Seeds-Kee-Dee Agie (Prairie Chicken River). On Sept. 16 1811, the Astorians near it’s headwaters termed it the Spanish River. To the Spaniards, far to the south, it was the Rio Verde (Green River). Jedediah Smith and his Mountain Men, making the first westward crossing of the south Pass by white men, camped near here Mar 19, 1824 on the Seeds-Kee-Dee. They trapped the river and its forks which were named for them: LaBarge, Ham’s, Black’s, Smith’s, Henry’s, etc. These waters were considered as the greatest beaver waters ever known. The upper reaches became the center of the fur trade and the Rendezvous. In 1841 the fur trade ceased, but the trappers had blazed the trails for the emigrants. For forty-nine years over the Oregon and California trails, thousands of emigrants going west, crossed these waters nearby. The many that drowned and died were buried along the river banks. The Mountain Men guided, manned the ferries and traded with the emigrants. Graves, marked and unmarked, names cut in the rocks and wagon trails worn deep remain with the legend and lore of a great river of the West – The Green.”