| OCR Text |
Show X v Dr. Dail Averett and Pearl Baker at Butch Cassidy inscription. Note Dr. Averett stooping under low overhanging cliff top. Cassidy Left His Mark On SE Utah Rocks By Pearl Baker Butch Cassidy Rock Art. . Dr. Dail Averett and his friend Lowell Curtis from Salina met me on 1-70, where it crosses the Muddy Mud-dy a few miles this side of the Emery County turn-off, turn-off, and took me down into the country south of there to see a Butch Cas-sidv Cas-sidv inscription on a cave wall. The cave was small, but could have been a welcome shelter to a man during a storm. Above it in the wash, is a small meadow where a saddle horse or two and a pack horse would have found feed until the storm blew over. The writing was made with charcoal, but had been put on thickly, and had probably oxidized afterward af-terward until it was almost al-most weather proof. The name was sheltered, but not completely, and during dur-ing the many years since it had been applied, the rock around the letters had eroded away, leaving the letters standing out in desert varnish from the lighter-colored background. back-ground. There is not much reason rea-son to doubt its authenticity. authen-ticity. It is very old, and in those days, no one else would have had a reason to write it. However, How-ever, it is spelled Casa-dy, Casa-dy, and the one that has since eroded off the ledge by San Rafael was spelled Casidy. Did he change his mind about the spelling? This seems to be the year of Butch Cassidy. In Spokane, Jim Dullenty, who works for the Spokane Spo-kane Daily Chronicle started to dig into the William Phillips material. mater-ial. He found that the adopted son of William Phillips and his wife had a trunk ful of manuscript and written niateri.il. He also learned that KUen Harris had typed this manuscript. Jim and I joined a few others who are western history buffs in Salt Lake City in April, Ap-ril, and talked about this. Afterward, he located the son of Kllen Harris, who had changed his name to Fitzharris because he was interested in the movie mo-vie business, and talked to him. He was convinced that William Phillips was Butch Cassidy. He also told Dullenty that he didn't want anything for the manuscript which his mother had worked on, and the adopted son of Phillips then gave the material ma-terial to Dullenty. Writing in the third person, Phillips detailed the exploits of Butch Cassidy Cas-sidy job by job, town by town, and the South American Am-erican part jibes with the geographical names. . Phillips says he was born in 1865 in Minnesota, but Dullenty discovered that the town he was born in was not settled until 1870. He has been unable to follow Phillips before 1908, when he and his wife came toSpokane, and Phillips opened a machine shop. He joined both the F.Iks and Masonic lodges, and when he was in Lander Lan-der in 1933 was honored by the local lodge of Masons. Roy Jones, an Indian who was on the mountain with Phillips and the Harrises Har-rises and who saw his aunt give back to Phillips Phil-lips the ring that he had given her before he went to the penitentia ry in IS 9-1 , told me that Butch had died in 1944. Dullenty is planning to do research in the lender area this month. Although Phillips' wife denied that he was Butch Cassidy, most things seem to point that way, and before he quits, there is no doubt but what Dullenty Dul-lenty will discover proof of the death of Butch Cassidy, Cas-sidy, and where he is buried. |
