09/02/2026
IMPORTANT SWEETWATER COUNTY LANDMARKS ARE NAMED FOR A NOTORIOUS CROOK
September 2 2026
Several prominent landmarks in northwest Sweetwater County are named for a man one historian termed “a notorious hard drinking murderer, a high-bracket swindler, and a common thief,” the Sweetwater County Historical Museum said this week.
The Jack Morrow Hills and Jack Morrow Creek are named for John Andrew “Jack” Morrow. Born in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1832, Morrow came west about 1858 and settled first at Fort Kearney in Nebraska, where he operated a trading post on the Oregon Trail. Later he established a “road ranch” near the confluence of the North and South Platte Rivers. Road ranches were set up along the Oregon Trail and sold livestock and supplies to emigrants. Many were honest, but some were criminal enterprises. At the top of this list was the Morrow Ranch.
Morrow built a d**e that compelled trail traffic to pass through his ranch. Emigrants were fleeced and their horses, mules, cattle, and oxen stolen to be sold later to wagon trains that followed. (Morrow was said to disguise his livestock-rustling henchmen as Indians.) He also branched out into freighting in Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and Utah. He is described in one Bureau of Land Management document as a “part time freighter and full time thief and swindler” who was “well known in Nebraska and Colorado for robbing his partners and stealing freight hauled by his own wagons.” Among these operations was a freight and stagecoach line from Point of Rocks to the gold fields at South Pass via Freighter Gap.
By one account, while hauling supplies and gunpowder for the Army he switched the gunpowder in barrels for sand and sold it for a handsome profit. A heavy drinker, while inebriated he often regaled listeners with colorful accounts of his “adventures” and claimed to have killed a man as the result of a dispute. In 1869 - likely due to unwelcome attention from suspicious Army officials - Morrow left his Platte River Ranch and moved to Omaha, where he purchased an impressive home.
Having received inside information on the Union Pacific Railroad’s route across what is now Sweetwater County, Morrow established a mining operation about 11 miles southeast of Point of Rocks near the Black Butte Stage Station on the Overland Trail, hoping to make a killing supplying coal to the railroad. The venture failed, however, and the mine was abandoned. The ruins of Morrow’s coal mining operation still stand today.
Like many another accomplished con man, Morrow had an uncanny knack for talking his way out of trouble and subterfuge. He was even successful in a political campaign to be elected a county commissioner when Lincoln County, Nebraska, was formed in 1866. He was a tireless self-promoter, and many newspapers of the era from as far away as Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York published lurid articles that breathlessly sang his praises. The following excerpt from a January 27, 1871 article in the Sioux City, Iowa, Sioux City Journal was typical:
“Jack Morrow, now one of the wealthiest men of Omaha, and our old mountain friend, is being immortalized by the press throughout the country... Well, they can find no better man; and we know that whatever may be said in this way to be true. Jack has had some fearful, and much pleasant experience during his fifteen years of mountain life. We have seen him with a dozen revolvers at his head, and again we have rode fast and furious, in Jack’s company, with a hundred murdering redskins in pursuit. Jack has accumulated a fortune, and we wish him a mint of pleasure in its enjoyment.”
Morrow died of pneumonia in Omaha on July 7, 1876. His obituary in the Omaha Bee was as effusive as might be expected:
“The name and fame of Jack Morrow as a frontiersman was and is still widely known throughout the West. He was a remarkable character, and was a man with a history - a history full of romantic incidents, hair-breadth escapes, thrilling adventures, personal encounters, and deeds of bravery and reckless daring.”
The truth about Morrow begs the question: How did important Wyoming landmarks come to be named for someone so despicable? To this day, the specific details of how the Jack Morrow Hills and Jack Morrow Creek were named are a mystery. However, it is not unreasonable to speculate that when the names were assigned, many years after Morrow’s death, officials were reacting to his positive press from the 1860s and 1870s. In other words, the myth outlived the man.
The Sweetwater County Historical Museum is located at 3 E. Flaming Gorge Way in Green River. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and admission is free.
