Stories behind the photographs
Heart Mountain and the Cozzens family
History of Heart Mountain
Older rock sitting on younger rock, a Crow landmark, ranch country, a wartime camp and a family homestead, all under one peak.
Geology
Heart Mountain's summit rock is more than 300 million years old, yet it sits on rock only about 55 million years old.1 The mountain is a block from the Heart Mountain Detachment, one of the largest landslides known on land, about 49 million years ago.23 The slide sheet covered roughly 450 to 500 square miles (sources differ),12 and scientists still debate how fast it moved and whether it was one event or several.25636 The summit stands at 8,123 feet (2,476 m).14
The name
The Crow name translates as “Buffalo heart mountain”; the English name traces to the Lewis and Clark expedition.47 The mountain was within the Crow Reservation until the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.8
Settlement
Cattle ranchers and sheepherders moved into the area from the late 1870s, and Park County was created in 1909.79
World War II
From 1942 to 1945 the Heart Mountain camp below the peak was part of the internment of Japanese Americans forced from the West Coast; more than 14,000 people were held there in total.10111243 Closing dates differ by source: the National Park Service lists the camp as open from August 11, 1942, to November 10, 1945,11 and the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation says the last trainload left on November 10, 1945, but also that the camp closed in September 1945.43 Its draft resisters (the Fair Play Committee) and those who served in the military are both part of the camp's story.10 Counts of those who served differ by source: the National Park Service says 385 residents served,10 the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation says over 800,12 Northwest College says more than 900, with 654 going directly from the camp into the service,40 and the 1985 memorial plaque honors more than 750.30
After the war
After the war the land was opened to veteran homesteaders, starting with a 1947 drawing.1415 The camp site is a National Historic Landmark (2006) with an Interpretive Center that opened in 2011.1323
Today
The Nature Conservancy protects Heart Mountain Ranch Preserve and keeps a public trail open to the summit, the trail that made the summit photographs here possible.161718 Visit the preserve
Geology
How Heart Mountain slid
The rock at the top of Heart Mountain did not form here. It slid here as part of the Heart Mountain Detachment, about 49 million years ago.334 Peer-reviewed studies call it the largest known landslide on land; a 2016 study puts it more cautiously, “among the largest landslide masses in the rock record.”33343536
Where the rock came from
The summit is limestone and dolomite of the Madison and Bighorn formations, laid down in a shallow sea about 350 and 450 million years ago.2 Before the slide, that rock lay about 25 to 30 miles to the northwest, near today's Beartooth Mountains and the northeast corner of Yellowstone (sources differ on the distance).12
What set it off
The slide happened while the volcanoes that built the Absaroka Range were erupting.13 The Crandall and Sunlight volcanic centers have both been suggested as the trigger.2 The USGS says recent studies point to a volcanic plug, a lamprophyre diatreme, forced up through flat-lying sedimentary rock.3 A 2017 study found zircon crystals from that plug and from the slide’s base layer identical in age, and concluded the plug “provided the trigger mechanism.”37 Zircon ages date the slide itself to 48.87 ± 0.20 million years ago.34
How it moved
The sheet slid southeast toward Cody on a slope of only about 2 degrees, far flatter than most landslides.23 How a sheet that large moved so far on so gentle a slope is the central puzzle. Geologists have two main explanations, shown below as Thought 1 (one fast slide on a gas cushion) and Thought 2 (many slips over a long time).2336 The sheet broke into blocks as it went. Heart Mountain is one of them, now resting on 55 million year old Willwood Formation rock.12
How big and how far
Size estimates differ. GeoWyo gives about 450 square miles before movement, NASA perhaps 500 square miles, and the USGS at least 3,500 square kilometers, larger than Rhode Island.123 Pieces of the slide are scattered over about 1,300 square miles, and carbonate rock at McCulloch Peaks traveled at least 26 miles.2 Peer-reviewed studies give at least 3,400 km² (about 1,300 square miles),3234 3,500 km²38 and as much as 5,000 km²,37 with more than 2,000 km³ of rock.35 For distance they give a minimum of 45 km (about 28 miles), about 50 km (31 miles), and a run-out of as much as 85 km (53 miles).323337
How fast
If it was one slide (Thought 1), it was fast. The USGS describes a catastrophic slide moving faster than 100 meters per second, with much of the movement possibly within minutes.3 GeoWyo puts the top speed between one third of and just under the speed of sound, finishing in minutes to a few hours.2 One 2010 model gives a top speed of “tens of meters per second to more than 100 m s−1” and sliding that lasted “of the order of a few tens of minutes.”33 Under Thought 2 there is no single top speed: the distance built up over many slips.36
Still debated
Geologists still argue whether it moved all at once or in steps. Most proposed explanations involve one catastrophic event, as a 2016 study by Swanson, Wernicke and Hauge notes, but that study found evidence of “multiple slip events.”365 A two-event idea has also been proposed.6 NASA notes that the specifics remain a mystery.1 Pick a thought below to see each idea on the map.
Owner of CloudViewPhotography.com
History of the Photographer
The owner of CloudViewPhotography.com comes from two Powell, Wyoming, families. On one side he is the grandson of Fred and Lucy Cozzens; on the other, of Archie and Merle Ray, who moved to Powell in 1959.2429 His family has lived in the Bighorn Basin since his great-great-grandfather John Cozzens came to Byron in 1900.202224
He started out loving the sky, the clouds, the mountains and nature. He cut his teeth on a phone camera and now shoots handheld, which makes up most of his portfolio.
Other than his wife and 400 pounds of dogs, his hobby is the hunt for quiet moments, and shooting that moment when he finds it.
New work shows up on Instagram first. Follow along to see it as it comes in.
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Family History
The Way to Heart Mountain, a CloudView limited edition.
The Cozzens family came to Byron, Wyoming, around 1900 with Mormon settlers.2022 Paul Cozzens worked on Heart Mountain for the Nuckols and Cozzens sheep outfit and filed a homestead on the mountain.20 Joe Cozzens was known as a Powell flockmaster.21
Joe was born in Idaho in 1886 and came to Byron with his family in 1900. As a young man he worked on some of the Big Horn Basin's biggest construction projects, including the Corbett Dam near Cody, the Sidon Canal near Byron and the Garland Canal through what is now Powell, and he helped lay railroad track. In 1910 he went to work for sheepman Melvin Nuckols. The two became partners in the Nuckols and Cozzens Sheep Company, with Heart Mountain as their headquarters.30
In 1911 Joe began writing to Bertha Fawcett of England as a pen pal. Bertha came to the United States in 1912, met Joe in person for the first time soon after, and they married in 1914.30
In 1915 Joe and his brother Paul filed homestead claims on Heart Mountain, and that same year Joe and Bertha built a one-room house on Buck Creek. Joe met his homestead requirements and received the deed in 1924. Nuckols sold his share in 1935 to Charles and Lloyd Taggart, and in 1942 Joe bought out the Taggarts. In 1944 he sold his land and grazing leases to Hyrum Bischoff, after more than 30 years on Heart Mountain.30
Joe and Paul grazed sheep on government land that became the Heart Mountain internment camp in 1942. A trail sign says some of the land they had leased was farmed by the people held there, and that after the camp closed, some of it was opened to homesteading by veterans.30
Joe's son Fred herded sheep and tended camp as a boy for his father's sheep company, which had a homestead on Heart Mountain.24
In 1906 Joe carved his name in a sandstone ledge with Heart Mountain behind it, and the family still visits it. Its exact location is kept private.27
Joe and Bertha's son Francis remembered their neighbor Arnold Hiltsley, known as Snake River Bill, as “one of the old-time frontier men” with “long hair and a big mustache,” and recalled seeing Hiltsley's old bootleg still when he was a boy. Snake River Bill eventually sold his Heart Mountain homestead to Joe Cozzens.30
Today, trail signs on the mountain tell the story of homesteaders including the Cozzens family.19
Along the trail
Stories from the signs on the hike up Heart Mountain.30
The mountain
From the trail sign
What's in a Name?
Most people agree the Crow called it "Buffalo Heart Mountain," because the top of the mountain was said to resemble a human or animal heart. Others say "Hart" came from early misspellings, or from a man named Hart, and some sources call it Heart Butte. Some locals call it the Sleeping Indian.
Sign: Park County Archives; photos by Carrie Peters, The Nature Conservancy.30
From the trail sign
Foretop's Father
The Crow often call Heart Mountain Foretop's Father. In the story, a man named Foretop fasted on the mountain and had a vision: if he wore his hair in a pompadour, he would live until the mountain crumbled, and he would always win against his enemies, the Blackfeet. About ten years later he heard part of the mountain had crumbled, and he fought one more battle and was supposedly killed somewhere near Heart Mountain.
Sign: Heart Mountain and the Crow People, from a 2002 oral history in the McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West; drawings by Caroline Henley.30
From the trail sign
The mystery of Heart Mountain
The cliffs of Heart Mountain are limestone and dolomite laid down in shallow seas about 400 million years ago. They sit on top of the much younger Willwood Formation, about 55 million years old, after sliding roughly 60 miles from near Dead Indian Hill along the Heart Mountain detachment, a fault tilted less than two degrees. How a mountain-size mass of rock moved that far is still unsolved.
Note: published studies give a shorter distance than the sign: at least 45 km (about 28 miles), with a run-out of up to 85 km (about 53 miles). The USGS places the breakaway near Silver Gate, Montana, to the northwest.33237
Sign text: Dr. Thomas A. Hauge.30
From the trail sign
Lady Mountain
A poem on the trail by L.L. French calls the mountain a "very pretty Lady" guarding the valley below, puts on her bonnet before heavy rain or snow, and tells travelers they are getting close to home. It ends: "Heart Mountain. She looks so near."
Poem: L.L. French.30
The land and the basin
From the trail sign
Snake River Bill
Arnold Hiltsley, known as Snake River Bill, was born in 1861, came to the Cody area in the early 1900s and homesteaded on the north side of the mountain. He is said to have made bootleg whiskey there during prohibition, and he later sold his homestead to Joe Cozzens. He died in 1946.
Sign: Park County Archives and the Cozzens family.30
From the trail sign
Lifeblood of the Big Horn Basin
The Heart Mountain Canal, dug in the late 1930s and early 1940s, runs 28 miles and irrigates over 30,000 acres. The first drawing for veteran homesteads came in 1947. One homesteader “wanted no part of Heart Mountain. The Bureau gave him a year and a day to change his mind, but he did not.”
Note: Bureau of Reclamation pages give the canal as 26 to 26.2 miles long and the Heart Mountain Division as 27,337 to 31,120 irrigable acres.4142
Sign: Heart Mountain Irrigation District.30
From the trail sign
Big Horn Basin
The basin formed 50 to 60 million years ago, when the crust buckled, pushing the basin down and the mountains around it up. Sand, silt and shale eroded from the mountains filled it in. Its oil fields have produced more than a billion barrels, and production continues today.
Note: the Wyoming State Geological Survey says seven of the basin’s fields alone total “almost 2 billion barrels of produced oil (WOGCC, 2025).”39
Sign text: Dr. Thomas A. Hauge.30
From the trail sign
Buck Creek
The open flat at the base of the mountain is the Buck Creek flat, where the Buck Creek drainages meet near the parking area. It supports several greater sage-grouse leks, where males perform their courtship dances, and the creek provides brood-rearing habitat.
Sign photo: Carrie Peters, The Nature Conservancy.30
Remembering the camp
From the trail sign
Hearts as Big as the Mountain
On August 21, 2011, The Nature Conservancy hosted a hike to the top for people once held at the Heart Mountain internment camp and their families, as part of the dedication of the Interpretive Learning Center. One of them, Janet Setsuda, had looked up at the mountain through the camp fence as a girl and dreamed of sitting on top. When she reached it, she “arrived where she needed to be.”
Sign: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation; text by Kelly Jensen.30
From the trail sign
Etched in History
For people held at the camp, the sign says, the memories are bittersweet. The sign shows art made at the camp, including J. Mayuchi's oil painting Moon over Heart Mountain. Amy Mass, a former incarceree, came back in the 1980s and found the mountain still there: "Seeing the mountain was like a homecoming."
Sign: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.30
Fred Cozzens, the photographer's grandfather
Fred and his younger brother Francis spent part of their childhood in Salt Lake City. Fred wrote to his father there: “We all wish we could go to Bear Tooth and have some fish and be with our dear Papa. Don't forget to come and get us. Francis sends his love.” The letter is undated; a family transcription places it around 1922 or 1923. Joe kept it in his scrapbook with a note that it “was written by Fred and Francis when they were in SLC.”28
Francis Cozzens
Fred's younger brother, Joseph Francis “Francie” Cozzens, was born in Byron on August 3, 1919, to Joseph and Bertha Cozzens, and graduated from Powell High School in 1937. After training in California he worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, where his obituary says he helped build the wings on the first DC-3.31
Francis married his high school sweetheart, Beula Fay Good, in Powell in 1940. Back in Powell he ran a crankshaft grinding business, co-owned Cozzens Motors, the Chrysler-Plymouth dealership, with his brother Mel for 22 years, and then served on the Powell police force until 1984. He was an avid fly fisherman who enjoyed writing poetry, telling stories and making humorous gadgets. Francis died on December 28, 2002, and rests at Crown Hill Cemetery in Powell.31
The Ray family
Merle Jean Phillipps was born in Burwell, Nebraska, on October 9, 1925, and graduated from high school there in 1943. That year she went to San Diego and married Archie Ray, who was stationed there with the Marines during World War II, while she worked at Consolidated Aircraft from 1943 to 1946.29
Archie and Merle moved to Powell in 1959 and raised their four daughters there. Merle cooked at Northwest College and other places over the years, loved playing cards, was a devoted football fan and a great cook. Archie (1923 to 1997) and Merle (1925 to 2012) rest at Crown Hill Cemetery in Powell.29
Every fact on this page comes from a public record or a family source.See all sources