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About Big Piney
The town of Big Piney is located in the Green River Valley where three creeks flow out of the Wyoming Mountain Range, to the west, and into the Green River. The creeks are named North Piney, Middle Piney and South Piney Creek. The elevation is high, 6,820 feet, and the weather is correspondingly cool in summer and cold in winter. The Green River flows past a few miles to the east. It flows out of the Wind River Mountains, off to the north, heading southward towards Utah. It makes a bend near Big Piney, approaching from the east, and then turning southward again. The lowlands around the river and the creeks is grassland, and the higher areas are covered in sagebrush.
Big Piney was settled in 1879 when rancher Daniel B. Budd got stuck in a snowstorm while herding 1000 cattle from Nevada to be shipped east. After spending the winter at Big Piney, he moved his family here the next summer. In addition to ranching, oil has become a major industry in the area.
U.S. Highway 189 is the highway accessing Big Piney, heading north-south through the Green River Valley. Southward it comes to La Barge, and just north of Big Piney about a mile, it comes to Marbleton, the town founded by Daniel Budd’s son some years later. Wyoming Highway 350 heads west from Big Piney towards the oil fields and the Wyoming Mountain Range. The population of Big Piney was 408 at the 2000 census.
For More Information:
See Big Piney’s official site at www.townofbigpiney.com, and the wikipedia article on Big Piney.