Little Snake

Little Snake is a 9,920-acre Inventoried Roadless Area in the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, on the southern Sierra Madre slope in Carbon County, Wyoming. The area sits in montane country on the Brush Creek-Hayden Ranger District, anchored by Fletcher Peak. The land drains into the Little Snake River system through the Roaring Fork Little Snake River and is fed by Standard Creek, Karen Creek, Cottonwood Creek, Sherard Creek, Mallard Creek, and Rabbit Creek. These channels gather snowmelt on the southern slope and carry it west and south toward the Yampa-Green River system. Water moves through clear, cold step-pool streams under aspen and conifer canopy, with seasonal flow tied to Sierra Madre snowpack.

Plant communities follow elevation, aspect, and the dry-to-wet gradient typical of the southern Sierra Madre. Rocky Mountain Lodgepole Pine Forest blankets cool slopes; Rocky Mountain Dry and Wet Subalpine Spruce-Fir Forest hold the higher ground. Rocky Mountain Aspen Forest and Intermountain Aspen and Conifer Forest fill moist draws and avalanche tracks, with quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) over an understory of arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata), northern mule's-ears (Wyethia amplexicaulis), silvery lupine (Lupinus argenteus), and Osha (Ligusticum porteri) — an IUCN-vulnerable subalpine forb. Southern Rockies Mixed Conifer Forest and Southern Rockies Ponderosa Pine Woodland transition to warmer exposures, where Rocky Mountain Gambel Oak Shrubland tangles with Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii) and red raspberry (Rubus idaeus). Rocky Mountain Limber and Bristlecone Pine Woodland persists on rocky exposures. Open ground takes several forms: Intermountain Mountain Sagebrush Steppe on dry slopes; Rocky Mountain Subalpine Meadow and Northern Rockies Subalpine Grassland on high benches; Rocky Mountain Foothill Shrubland on transitional terrain; Intermountain Semi-Desert Grassland and Colorado Plateau Pinyon-Juniper Woodland reach the lower edges. Streamside cover is Rocky Mountain Subalpine Streamside Woodland and Streamside Shrubland — Drummond's willow (Salix drummondiana), red-osier dogwood (Cornus sericea), and white bog orchid (Platanthera dilatata, IUCN-vulnerable).

The wildlife community spans canopy, meadow, shrub, and stream. Moose (Alces alces) browse the willow streamside corridors; wapiti (Cervus canadensis) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) work the meadow-forest edges. Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) moves through the lodgepole and spruce-fir. Brown creeper (Certhia americana) and American three-toed woodpecker (Picoides dorsalis) work the conifer bark; Canada jay (Perisoreus canadensis) and Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) cache seed across the high country. Flammulated owl (Psiloscops flammeolus) and long-eared owl (Asio otus) hunt the mixed-conifer transition; dusky grouse (Dendragapus obscurus) holds the conifer-meadow interface. Broad-tailed hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus), evening grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus, IUCN-vulnerable), and Virginia's warbler (Leiothlypis virginiae) work the aspen and oak edges. Sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) uses the lower mixed habitat. American mink (Neogale vison) hunts the creeks; rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), Rocky Mountain cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus virginalis), and brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) hold the cold headwater streams. Portions of this area fall within the potential range of several federally listed species; see the Conservation section for details.

A traveler climbing from the Roaring Fork through aspen and lodgepole onto the slopes of Fletcher Peak passes from cool conifer shade into open meadow and bunchgrass, with Gambel oak holding the warm exposures below and the high subalpine country opening above.

Little Snake rises on the southern slopes of the Sierra Madre in Carbon County, Wyoming, in the headwaters of the Little Snake River. The country was traveled by Indigenous peoples long before Euro-American settlement. By the time of early contact, what is now Carbon County "was crossed regularly by Ute, Shoshone, Crow, Arapaho, Cheyenne and Lakota (Sioux) tribes" [1]. The Sierra Madre held particular importance as a gathering and hunting range: "Trappers and traders held rendezvous in the 1830s in a place they named Camp le Grand at the base of the Sierra Madre Mountains in what's now south central Wyoming, and Ute and other tribes of American Indians were also in the area in those early days" [2]. The name Grand Encampment, which attaches to the river and town just east of Little Snake, recalls this period.

Euro-American intrusion came with the gold rushes. "A branch of the Cherokee Trail was blazed through the region by California-bound gold-seekers in the late 1840s" [2]. "The first white settlers arrived in the 1860s and 1870s" [2]. Industrial logging followed the Union Pacific Railroad: "The historic logging industry began operations in the Sierra Madre Mountains of southern Wyoming in the late 1800s" [4], cutting timbers for nearby copper and gold mines and hand-hewn ties for the railroad. "Tie hacks cut timber and floated the logs down creeks to the North Platte River during spring run-offs to supply ties for the Union Pacific Railroad" [2]. Ranching arrived in the same period: "Ranchers brought cattle, with as many as 10,000 head reported in the area in the mid-1880s" [2]. The high meadows of the Sierra Madre also became important sheep range; in 1924, "nearly 7,000 cattle from Snake River and about 100,000 sheep from the desert found grazing grounds" on the Hayden National Forest, which then encompassed Little Snake country [3].

Copper mining transformed the south side of the Sierra Madre at the turn of the twentieth century. "George Doane reportedly discovered copper in the mountains near Battle Lake in the Sierra Madres in the late 1880s and began the Doane-Rambler mine" [2]; "sheepherder Ed Haggarty's copper vein find in 1897 marked the beginning of a decade-long boom" [2]. The Ferris-Haggarty mine, operating just east of present-day Little Snake, "employed 250 men and used 400 horses to produce average daily shipments of 80,000 pounds of copper ore" [2]. A sixteen-mile aerial tramway — "the longest in the world at the time" [2] — carried ore from the mountains to a smelter at Encampment. The boom ended around 1908; on the Hayden National Forest map of that era, towns such as "Copperton, Rambler, and Battle… are now only the ghosts of earlier settlements once prosperous and busy, when the discovery of rich copper-ore deposits introduced this region to the world" [3].

Federal protection followed. The country was placed under the Sierra Madre Reserve, later renamed the Hayden National Forest, and "a great deal of this region, which makes up the Encampment and Big Creek watersheds, was cut over very heavily for ties and lumber before the establishment of the old Sierra Madre Reserve" [3]. Industrial-scale logging persisted on Sierra Madre drainages; "the last tie drive in the Medicine Bow Mountains was conducted on Douglas Creek in the spring of 1940" [4]. "Historic remnants of cabins and other structures from the 'tie hack' logging era" are scattered across the Sierra Madre [5]. The Hayden was later consolidated into the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest. The 9,920-acre Little Snake Inventoried Roadless Area is now on the Brush Creek-Hayden Ranger District and is protected under the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

Vital Resources Protected

• Cold Headwater Stream Integrity: Little Snake holds the headwaters of the Roaring Fork Little Snake River and is drained by Standard, Karen, Cottonwood, Sherard, Mallard, and Rabbit Creeks. Rocky Mountain Subalpine Streamside Woodland and Streamside Shrubland — Drummond's willow, red-osier dogwood, and herbaceous edges — shade the channels and anchor banks. The roadless condition keeps these source flows cold and low-sediment for rainbow, Rocky Mountain cutthroat, and brook trout, and supports the downstream Little Snake / Yampa / Green River system.

• Elevational Gradient and Aspen-Mixed Conifer Mosaic: The area spans an unbroken transition from Intermountain Semi-Desert Grassland and Colorado Plateau Pinyon-Juniper Woodland at lower elevations, through Rocky Mountain Gambel Oak Shrubland and Southern Rockies Ponderosa Pine, up to Aspen Forest, Mixed Conifer, Lodgepole Pine, and Subalpine Spruce-Fir. This intact gradient supports a diverse plant community — including IUCN-vulnerable Osha (Ligusticum porteri) and white bog orchid (Platanthera dilatata) — and provides habitat for the area's elevation-banded bird community (flammulated owl, Virginia's warbler, dusky grouse).

• Carnivore and Wide-Ranging Mammal Habitat: Continuous Lodgepole Pine and Subalpine Spruce-Fir Forest provides interior habitat for federally threatened Canada lynx, while the willow streamside corridors support moose. Roadless management preserves the connectivity that allows these species to use the area as part of a larger Sierra Madre habitat block.

Potential Effects of Road Construction

• Sedimentation of Headwater Channels: Road cut-and-fill on the steep southern Sierra Madre slope intercepts subsurface flow and delivers chronic fine sediment to Standard, Karen, Cottonwood, Sherard, Mallard, and Rabbit Creeks through ditch lines and culvert outlets. Fine sediment fills the gravel interstices that cutthroat and rainbow trout use for spawning and rearing, and undersized culverts become hydraulic barriers to fish passage. Road prisms continue to shed material for decades after construction.

• Forest Fragmentation and Lynx Habitat Loss: Clearing a roadway through Lodgepole Pine, Subalpine Spruce-Fir, and Aspen-Mixed Conifer Forest replaces interior canopy with permanent edge habitat. Edges experience higher windthrow, altered microclimate, and increased predation on interior-forest birds. Canada lynx avoids road corridors and incurs direct mortality at crossings, reducing the effective habitat area available to this federally threatened species.

• Invasive Species and Gambel Oak Shrubland Disturbance: Construction equipment, vehicle traffic, and exposed cut slopes introduce non-native plants such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) into Rocky Mountain Gambel Oak Shrubland, Intermountain Mountain Sagebrush Steppe, and Pinyon-Juniper Woodland. Once cheatgrass establishes along a road corridor, it shortens fire-return intervals and converts native shrublands to annual grassland — a transition that, regionally, has proven essentially irreversible.

Little Snake covers 9,920 acres on the Brush Creek-Hayden Ranger District of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, on the southern Sierra Madre slope in Carbon County, Wyoming. Access is from the Roaring Fork trailhead and the Verde Mine trailhead, both reached from the Forest Service road system on the south side of the Sierra Madre. The Roaring Fork Trail (#860, 7.5 miles, horse use) provides the longest backcountry route, climbing through aspen and spruce-fir to the headwater bowls. The Elkhorn Stock Driveway (#862, 2.6 miles) and Savery Stock Driveway (#861, 1.6 miles) are historic stock routes used by horse parties. The Battle Creek ATV Trail (#420, 2.6 miles) is a motorized route on the eastern edge of the area. No developed campgrounds are recorded within the polygon, but dispersed backcountry camping is widely practiced.

Hunting is a primary use. The mix of Rocky Mountain Lodgepole Pine Forest, Subalpine Spruce-Fir Forest, Aspen Forest, Southern Rockies Mixed Conifer Forest, and Subalpine Meadow supports wapiti (Cervus canadensis) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus); the Gambel oak and sagebrush openings on the lower slopes provide transitional range; the willow streamside corridors hold moose (Alces alces), managed under limited-quota tag draws. Sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus) is present on the lower mixed habitat. Wyoming Game and Fish Department hunt-area boundaries, license requirements, and season dates apply. Stock parties using the Elkhorn and Savery driveways and the Roaring Fork Trail are a long-standing tradition in this country.

Fishing concentrates on the headwater creeks of the Little Snake River system. Standard, Karen, Cottonwood, Sherard, Mallard, and Rabbit Creeks hold rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), Rocky Mountain cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus virginalis), and brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) in cold, willow-lined step-pool waters. The Roaring Fork Little Snake River itself carries the bulk of the angling opportunity on the area. Anglers should consult Wyoming Game and Fish Department regulations for water-specific species and limits.

Birding is shaped by the elevation transitions. Two eBird hotspots within 24 kilometers — Medicine Bow NF–Battle Creek Campground (121 species) and Lost Creek Campground (74 species) — document the wider species pool. Inside the area, expect Canada jay (Perisoreus canadensis), brown creeper (Certhia americana), and American three-toed woodpecker (Picoides dorsalis) in the conifer; flammulated owl (Psiloscops flammeolus) in the mixed-conifer transition; dusky grouse (Dendragapus obscurus) at the conifer-meadow interface; broad-tailed hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus) and evening grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus) on the aspen and meadow edges; sora (Porzana carolina) in wet meadow bottoms; cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum) along the streams.

Photographers will find strong material along the elevational transitions — Gambel oak and sagebrush below, then aspen, then mixed conifer and spruce-fir — and around the rim of the Roaring Fork drainage. Snowshoeing and backcountry skiing are possible during winter; the southern Sierra Madre holds heavy snow.

Every activity described here depends on the roadless condition. The dispersed character of stock travel, the cold cutthroat streams, the interior-forest habitat for lynx, and the quiet of the Roaring Fork backcountry all turn on the absence of new roads within the polygon. Road construction would replace the present low-density use with the narrow strip a vehicle can reach.