Cokeville stands at the confluence of the Bear River and Smiths Fork valleys. Between 1812 and 1865, these valleys were the domain of American Indians, fur trappers, and traders, and during the 1830s and 1840s they became a well traveled pathway for emigrant trains going to Oregon and California. Fur trappers and pioneers knew the place as Smiths Fork on the Bear River, but it took its permanent name from nearby coal deposits that produced coke, an intense burning, virtually smokeless product. The Mormon Church sent the first permanent settlers to found a community there in 1874, when Sylvanus Collett and Robert Gee arrived with their families at the Smiths Fork River and were soon followed by the John Bourne family. The men trapped, hunted, and traded hides, fur, and extra meat for supplies in Evanston, Wyoming, about 70 miles south, a difficult trip sometimes made in winter on the frozen Bear River. Travel became easier with the launching of the Oregon Shoreline in 1881, and the railroad stimulated trade and shifted the center of the main settlement toward the tracks. Before 1908, Cokeville had two saloons, a hotel, a general store, and boarding houses, and over the next nine years it incorporated and added a state bank, a newspaper, a water system, and electric lighting. In 1922, Ethel Stoner became mayor and two other women won seats on the town council on a law enforcement ticket, though they found local police unwilling to enforce Prohibition laws then in force. After U.S. Highway 30 was commissioned through the town in 1926 and surfaced with oil in 1935, Cokeville stood on a major cross-country route, and the highway has continued to play an important role in the town's economy.