Watersheds

Green River
Sublette County’s watersheds are critical to the area's vitality and livelihood. Not only do they support a world-renowned wild trout fishery, but they also water ranch land and crops and power our municipal and industrial needs.

The Green River has its headwaters in the Wind River Mountains. The Green River, major tributary (and some say true source) of the great Colorado River system, is born from the meltwater of Sublette County's Wind River Mountains. From Green River Lakes, it runs 730 miles to join the Colorado River far south in Utah's Canyonlands National Park. The Green River was named, according to one legend, not for its color, but for a St. Louis partner of explorer William Ashley, who allegedly named it in the 1820s.

The Green is not only one of the major waterways of the Rocky Mountain West, it is also Sublette County's agricultural lifeline, recreational crown jewel and the basis of most of its early history. Native Americans came to the Green River Valley seasonally for game, as evidenced by the remains of buffalo jumps and kill sites. Adventurers like the Astorian group, led here by William Price Hunt in 1811, found the place excellent for restocking their food stores and resting. Fur trappers and mountain men wrestled a dangerous living from it, celebrating their survival at several Rendezvous on the Green River at Horse Creek. Parched pioneers crossed it on the Oregon Trail, and tie hacks in 1867 sent their first harvest of logs floating on it to the railroad 130 miles south. For more than a century, ranchers have produced Sublette County's only successful and sustainable cash crops - hay and livestock - by diverting precious rations of its water into their fields.

Abundant wildlife continue to thrive all along the river's course, from wild fish (including the rare Kendall Warm Springs dace) shading below its overhanging banks, to moose prowling the willows and osprey and eagles perched in the tall cottonwoods all along the floodplain. Ducks circle in the current, herons stalk the shallows, sandhill cranes bob and dance in the meadows and killdeers skitter over the mud. Sage grouse, pronghorn and deer come in from the dry hills for a drink or to find a cool humid spot in the hayfields.

New Fork River
The major tributaries of the Green River include Beaver Creek, Horse Creek, Cottonwood Creek, Piney Creeks, La Barge Creek, and Big Sandy. The New Fork River is also a tributary of the Green and flows out of the New Fork Lakes in the Upper Green River Valley, at the base of the Wind River Mountains.

From its origin in the Wind River Mountains 24 miles north of Pinedale, the New Fork veers southeast, gathering up the smaller streams that flow down from Wind River drainages: Willow Creek, Pine Creek, Pole Creek, Boulder Creek, and the East Fork River. The New Fork carves a boundary around the northeast and southeast edges of the Mesa before joining the Green River just below State Highway 351, fortifying the Green for its rendezvous with the Colorado and finally the Gulf of California.

Not as big or famous as the Green River, the New Fork has a peaceful and intimate character as it makes its way through grassy meadows, subdivisions, and ranchlands and below sagebrush benches and looming bluffs. Large stands of cottonwood and willow offer shade and attract wildlife.

These rivers and their tributaries benefit from private land conservation that fosters both streambank protection and improved water quality and are a focal point of the GRVLT land protection efforts. The fisheries and recreational opportunities afforded by these fabled waters support a lifestyle and an economy worthy of our best conservation efforts.

The GRVLT seeks to work with landowners along waterways and the lands that border them. These prime recreational lands are under unrelenting pressure from developers. Fortunately, many private landowners recognize that the protection of these lands greatly outweighs the short-term gains of development.