   
 When Moran journeyed west for the first time in 1871, his sights were set on Yellowstone, but the trail to the land of geysers passed through another remarkable landscape--one that would become as closely associated with Moran as Yellowstone--the Green River Valley of Wyoming. Once the site of the fur trappers' annual rendezvous, Green River had more recently served as the western terminus for the Union Pacific Railroad. By the time Moran arrived, the burgeoning town on the banks of the river could boast a schoolhouse, church, hotel, and brewery. Exercising a degree of artistic license worthy of Turner, Moran erased all signs of commercial development, concentrating instead on the multicolored buttes rising above the river. In paintings that contained more fiction than fact, Moran replaced railroad tracks with Indian caravans. Skillfully combining the spectacular landscape of Green River with figures that reflected an increasingly nostalgic view of Indian life, Moran produced a series of paintings that were so popular that he continued to sell variations on the theme well into the twentieth century.
 
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