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The Tom Sun Ranch, established in the early 1870s in the Sweetwater Valley of central Wyoming, dates to the period of the range cattle industry on the Plains. The Cheyenne Daily Leader remarked in 1882 that ''the eastern person of inquiring turn of mind who writes to his friends out west to ask what a ranch is like would find his answer in a description of Tom Sun's.'' Tom Sun was a frontiersman who became a pioneer cattleman. A French Canadian, who had been a mountain man and knew the Wyoming country thoroughly from his trapping days, Sun was higly respected in Wyoming. He was known for his integrity as well as for his ability to use a gun. The site of the ranch is both historic and scenic, for Sun chose his range on the Oregon Trail, along the Sweetwater River near Devils Gate and Independence Rock, notable landmarks on the famous overland trail.