Medicine Wheel is a National Historic Landmark located near the crest of the Bighorn Mountains of north-central Wyoming. The site is home to thousands of acres of preserved forest and features a large stone structure built from local white limestone. The site holds great significance for various Native American tribes and scientists and scholars continue to debate the original design and use of the site.1Fred Chapman, “Medicine Wheel/Medicine Mountain: Celebrated and Controversial Landmark,” WyoHistory.org, April 10, 2019, https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/medicine-wheel. Some scholars speculate that the Medicine Wheel was designed to look like the ground plan of a ceremonial shelter, while others posit that the site was used to mark major astronomical events such as the summer and winter solstices.2Deborah Scherrer, “Medicine Wheels and Cultural Connections,” Stanford Solar Center, 1, http://solar-center.stanford.edu/AO/Medicine-Wheels.pdf. This particular medicine wheel is one of between 70 and 150 medicine wheels that have been identified in the north-central United States and south-central Canada.3Fred Chapman, “The Bighorn Medicine Wheel 1988-1999,” CRM, no.3 (1999): 5, https://sacredland.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Bighorn_Medicine_Wheel.pdf.
The religious use of the Bighorn Medicine Wheel and tourist use of the site clashed in the 2001 Wyoming District Court case Wyoming Sawmills, Inc. v. US Forest Service.4Wyoming Sawmills, Inc. v. US Forest Service, 179 F. Supp 2d 1279 (D. Wyo. 2001).
