Wind River

About

Wind River, Wyoming — 1812 Fur Trade, 1940s Boysen Dam, 1976 Wild and Scenic, Shoshone Eastern Shoshone, 110-mi. The river runs roughly 110 miles through central Wyoming, gathering the drainage of 7,730 square miles across Fremont and Hot Springs Counties before it flows southeast to its confluence with the Bighorn River. USGS gauge 06228000 records an average of about 1,400 CFS, with a historic median near 1,200. Paddlers find the best conditions in the 500–3,000 CFS window, running water rated Class I–III depending on the reach.

The valley is the homeland of the Eastern Shoshone, who named the river for the warm chinook winds that sweep through the canyon—the Valley of the Warm Winds. The Wind River Reservation, established in 1868, encompasses the upper river, and the watershed remains home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. In 1812, the Wind River served as a major fur trade route, the river's defining early historical chapter.

Water science followed the fur trade by nearly a century. The 1907 USGS Wind River Survey, conducted in cooperation with the Reclamation Service, established the streamflow baseline for the 1905–1910 Shoshone Project integration and the 1921–1924 Riverton Project planning. The 1907 Wind River gage near Riverton holds the longest continuous streamflow record in central Wyoming. Downstream projects that grew from that survey include the 1939 Wind River Indian Reservation Irrigation Project and the 1962 completion of Boysen Dam.

The watershed also carried timber. The Wind River basin was logged from the 1880s to the 1940s, supporting the 1878–1907 Lander lumber industry and the 1907–1930s Wind River Tie Flume operations, which floated cross-ties down the canyon to the 1907 Oregon Short Line Railroad. The 1909–1920s Lander Tie & Timber Company worked the same country until the 1924 closure of the tie flume, replaced by the railroad, marked the end of large-scale logging. The 1939 creation of the reservation's timber program and the 1950 exhaustion of the high-country white-pine stands closed the commercial logging era.

Today the river moves through three distinct sections. The Upper Wind River runs Class I–II through reservation meadows, where permits are required. Wind River Canyon offers Class II–III water and a geological showcase—in 2000, Wyoming designated the highway through the canyon a state scenic byway, recognizing formations spanning from Precambrian to Cretaceous visible in a single drive. Below the canyon, the river widens into Class I flatwater toward Boysen Reservoir. A 1976 Wild and Scenic River designation protected parts of the river, and the 1990s–2010s brought restoration work, including the Wind River Tribal Restoration Project. The river today supports the Riverton, Lander, and Shoshoni economies, and its reputation as one of the country's top trout streams continues to draw anglers to central Wyoming.