Powell is a pleasant little farming community irrigated by water from the Buffalo Bill Reservoir and  surrounded by a variety of interesting mountains, including Heart Mountain which ran away from its geologic home in the Absarokas fifty million years ago and settled down here.

Heart Mountain lent its name to the nearby barbed wire-enclosed, watchtower-guarded relocation camp where more than 10,000 Japanese Americans spent World War II far away from their homes.  In the face of distrust, discrimination, and hardship, the spirit of these Americans was extraordinary.  Heart Mountain's high school won the 1944 Big Horn Basin football championship, and 900 young men left the camp to fight for the Allies in Europe.  These people's courage and willingness to participate in American culture have earned them an honorable place in Wyoming's history, and though little remains of their town, efforts are underway there to commemorate them more adequately.