Recommendations

Trail navigation, supporting native and local communities, Darwin-recommended reading

TRAIL NAVIGATION

We highly recommend downloading Gaia GPS from the app store before your trip. This app is very useful for navigating in the backcountry surrounding Darwin, especially if you choose to go on unguided adventures. For best results, pay a couple dollars and download Gaia GPS USGS Topo map layer for our area.

You can borrow paper maps from the ranch, but if you prefer having your own map to annotate, you can purchase a Topo Map of the surrounding area.

Recommendations for Restaurants, Bars, Hotels, and attractions in Northwest Wyoming:

This google map contains an abridged list of our favorite spots around the area!

SUPPORTING NATIVE AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES

Darwin Ranch has partnered with the Chief Washakie Foundation to develop a language immersion program at the Darwin Ranch.

Places currently identified as national treasures, national recreation areas, and America’s first national park, Yellowstone – as well as the spectacular Darwin Ranch in the Gros Ventre mountains – were once Shoshone homelands and traditional Shoshone hunting grounds.

In 2021, 2022, and 2023 the Foundation ran its first cultural programs at the Darwin, involving many elders and tribal member participants. The elders taught hunting traditions and tribal history.

If you are interested in supporting the Chief Washakie Foundation or learning more about the Shoshone Language Immersion Program hosted by the Darwin in the Fall– click here. The Shoshone language and traditions are dying out, and they appreciate all they help they can get.

Darwin-Recommended Reading

LIFE IN WYOMING

The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich

Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx

Where Rivers Change Direction by Mark Spragg

Pushed Off the Mountain Sold Down the River: Wyoming's Search for Its Soul by Samuel Western

Knights of the Broadax: The Story of the Wyoming Tie Hacks by Joan Trego Pinkerton

HUMANS ON A WILD LANDSCAPE

Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks by Mark David Spence

Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch by Dan O’Brien

This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West by Christopher Ketcham

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan

Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey

NORTHWEST WYOMING ECOLOGY

Yellowstone Migrations by Joe Riis

Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb