Last reviewed 15 September 2026 · A three-minute read · 5860 BC–now
Pinedale, Wyoming, sits near Fremont Lake in Sublette County, ground marked by ancient hunting sites and a modern memorial alike. A 1993 federal phytoplankton survey of the lake, dedicated to biologist Robert C. Averett, shares its waters with the buried evidence of a 1980 family murder.
The short answer
Fremont Lake, east of Pinedale in Sublette County, Wyoming, is the subject of a 1993 federal phytoplankton survey dedicated to Robert C. Averett, a biologist who died while the study was underway. The same lake later surrendered barrels containing the bodies of a family murdered in 1980, decades after the killings.
Luftaufnahmen von Wyoming 2019 über das NAIP des USDA. — 2022 · NOAA Office for Coastal Management USDA-FSA Aerial Photography Field office (crediting while reuse is desired as C · Public domain
1993
A dead biologist's name opens a plankton report
The Fremont Lake, Wyoming report opens with a dedication instead of an introduction. It names Robert C. Averett. He was born October 3, 1930. He died June 25, 1993. The report calls it a tribute made "with respect and admiration."
The document is a federal survey. The Government Publishing Office prints these without ceremony. It tracks the microscopic algae drifting in Fremont Lake. The water sits east of Pinedale in Sublette County. Someone at the agency chose to open a technical paper on lake plankton with a dead colleague's name.
Averett died somewhere in the middle of the work. The lake had been sampled. The phytoplankton had been counted and classified. Then he was gone. Whoever carried the study to publication decided his name belonged on the first page. It came ahead of the data. It came ahead of the findings. It is the only place in the report where a person gets a name at all. Everywhere else, only algae species have names.
The dedication does not say what killed him, only when.
2003 to 2005
Only one survey ever bore a dedication
Fremont Lake kept being watched after Averett's name went onto the dedication page. Federal biologists ran a longer study nearby. They tracked mule deer across the Pinedale Anticline gas field. They filed annual reports in 2003, 2004, and 2005. Those reports counted animals, not algae. They carried no dedication at all. They are simply dated, filed, and forgotten the way most government paperwork is. Averett's is the one exception on record. It is a study of this water that remembered the man who worked it.
September 1980
A family was sunk in metal barrels
Fremont Lake holds more than water samples. In September 1980, Gerald Uden killed his wife Virginia Uden and her two young sons, Richard and Reagan. He sealed their bodies in metal barrels and sank them in the lake, three miles from where Averett's report was later dedicated.
The lake did not give them up for decades. Gerald Uden was finally convicted in 2013 and sentenced to life in prison. The water had kept its secret longer than it kept anything else.
Divers raised a barrel from Fremont Lake nearly forty-six years after the killings. Investigators still needed to confirm what was inside. The same lake that let a report vanish quietly had also swallowed a family whole. It only gave part of it back.
A recovery crew pulled one of the barrels from the lake in August 2026.
7,200 years ago
The oldest burial in Wyoming lies nearby
South of Pinedale, in a stretch of ground called the Jonah Field, archaeologists dug up the oldest known burial in Wyoming. It dates back roughly 7,200 years. No dedication page survives from that far back, only bone and soil.
The burial sits about five miles from the lake, but it marks the same country. People lived, hunted, and died here for thousands of years before Robert C. Averett ever waded in with a sample jar. The ground has been a resting place far longer than it has been a research site.
1904 to 1922
A cemetery made naming the dead its purpose
Pinedale Cemetery took its first burial in 1904. Townspeople laid the grounds out formally in 1916, and formed an official association in 1922. It now holds 1,676 memorial records, each one naming somebody who lived in this valley.
Here, names are the whole point. Every plot carries one, kept on purpose, generation after generation. That is what makes a wildlife biologist's dedication to Robert C. Averett stand out inside a stack of government paperwork. Names are common in the graveyard. In the filing cabinet, they are rare enough to notice.
Fremont Lake keeps its water cold and its accounts short, and only a few names ever make it onto either.
Sourced records, high and medium confidence. Era background is marked as such.
Deep time
The ground here sits on Quaternary glacial deposits of sand, gravel, and boulders, left behind as ice-age glaciers advanced and retreated through the valley.
Era background — not a record of this tile · Macrostrat
Prehistoric
7,880 to 4,690 years ago
Archaeologists have dated hunting sites in Sublette County, including the Wardell Buffalo Trap and the Trapper's Point Antelope Kill Site, to between 7,880 and 4,690 years ago, showing sustained indigenous presence in this valley long before Pinedale existed.
At the J. David Love Site in the Jonah Field south of Pinedale, archaeologists uncovered a 7,200-year-old burial, the oldest known human burial found anywhere in Wyoming.
The Wardell Buffalo Trap, about 1,000 years old, is the oldest known kill site in the region where hunters used bows and arrows rather than earlier weapons like the atlatl.
The first recorded burial at Pinedale Cemetery took place in 1904, and the grounds were formally laid out in 1916 with an official cemetery association forming in 1922.
In September 1980, Gerald Uden killed his wife Virginia and her two young sons, Richard and Reagan, and dumped their bodies in metal barrels into Fremont Lake just north of Pinedale.
Federal resource management plans through the 1980s and 1990s, including the Jonah Field natural gas project environmental impact statement, shaped land use in the Pinedale Resource Area surrounding this ground.
Era background — not a record of this tile · Internet Archive
2003-2005
Government-published studies from the early 2000s monitored mule deer populations in the Pinedale Anticline Project Area to assess the effects of nearby natural gas development.
Era background — not a record of this tile · Europeana / Bureau of Land Management
August 2026
In August 2026, a recovery effort pulled one of the metal barrels used to dispose of the murder victims up from the bottom of Fremont Lake, though it still needed to be confirmed what was inside.
Gerald Uden killed his wife Virginia and her two young sons, Richard and Reagan, and sank their bodies in metal barrels in Fremont Lake. He was not convicted until 2013, and one of the barrels was raised from the lake in August 2026.
Who was Robert C. Averett?
Robert C. Averett was a scientist, born October 3, 1930, who worked on a federal study of phytoplankton in Fremont Lake. He died on June 25, 1993, before the report was finished, and it was published with a dedication to him.
What was here before Pinedale existed?
Long before Pinedale was settled, the surrounding valley held indigenous hunting and kill sites, including the Wardell Buffalo Trap and the Trapper's Point Antelope Kill Site, dated between 7,880 and 4,690 years ago, and a 7,200-year-old burial at the J. David Love Site in the Jonah Field, the oldest known burial in Wyoming.
When was Pinedale Cemetery established?
Pinedale Cemetery took its first burial in 1904, was formally laid out in 1916, and gained an official cemetery association in 1922. It now holds 1,676 memorial records and was transferred to the Upper Green River Cemetery District in 1973.
Was the barrel from Fremont Lake confirmed to contain the victims?
A recovery effort pulled one of the metal barrels from the bottom of Fremont Lake in August 2026, but investigators still needed to confirm what was inside.
Where this came from
1
WyoHistory.org — Sublette County's oldest hunting and kill sites
