Saturday was like any other day during the peak summer tourist season at Old Trail Town in northwest Wyoming. But it' also was the momentous golden anniversary of the final journey of legendary mountain man John "Liver Eating" Johnson.

In June 1974, Johnson's remains were moved from a Los Angeles cemetery to a picturesque spot overlooking the Shoshone River. The reburial, two years after the release of the hit 1972 Robert Redford movie “Jeremiah Johnson,” based on life of the famous mountain man, made national news and attracted one of the largest crowds ever seen in Cody.

But Johnson's final journey in the untamed West was far from peaceful. It required body-snatching shenanigans, circumventing an out-of-state injunction and the steadfast orneriness of a class of Southern California students determined to get Johnson back where he belonged.