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Show ' ....... ,. . , . v . .,v. -.. - . - ONE OF THE EARLY ranches on the lower end of Willow Creek is the Harry Brown Ranch. Picture Pic-ture furnished by Phylis Warbe. , - , ,V . y - , ,CJ . ; ' RANGERS IN the Bookcliff area are Harry Brown (left) and Carl Squier. 1st settlers in Bookcliff area Editor Note: The third of a four part series on the Willow Creek and Bookcliff area. By (ieorge K. Iii The fourth and twenty-fourth of July ? were very important days of the year to I these people. Get-togethers were plann- ed for these special days. Always a big ' dinner, games, rides and so on. c Sometimes these would be held at cer- tain spots which provided water, shade trees and plenty of room. One such place was the Teawanna Bottoms on the Green River. These people were good with horses and took pride in raising rais-ing and caring for them. They were for the most part good riders, so a rodeo was always of high interest to them. They would plan for weeks to attend a rodeo and if it was a local one, many of them took active part in it. Most all of the ranches had some horses they were i breaking from time to time, and among these was an occasional outlaw animal as they were called. They presented quite a challenge to those determined to tame them as a result they put on quite a show. There was an occasion once as I recall many years ago during a rodeo in Vernal that one of the Willow Creek ranchers rode his horse on a dare into one of the restaurants on Main Street. Yes just like a page out of the old west or a picture out of a wild west show. They loved having a good time when the : occasion was at hand. Some of the ranches were so situated that they were located more or less on a main thoroughfare. Such was the case of the Birchell ranch. It was not un- ; common to see as many as thirty people there in an evening, especially if it was j of a time when a storm had come up. ; People on their way to upper Willow : Creek or to Hill Creek would many - times make this their overnight stop. Many Indians would stop as they migrated back and forth from the , Ouray area to the high country. : Mrs. Abe Hatch relates how more than once she had used a quarter of a beef to feed the overnighters at their place. Think of that in this day and age. How many people would be that hospitable, and those were hard times. There were other places that were out ' of the way to the extent that they : seldom saw anyone for weeks or even ' months at a time, think of it, riding as . much as seven miles to school or to ; your closest neighbor and ten miles or more to get your mail, and all of it on horse back. Most of the ranches raised good gardens and were pretty well self-supporting. self-supporting. As mentioned earlier two trips a year to town for supplies usually took care of their needs. Sometimes these trips created hardships, as it was a long drawn out journey regardless of which way you went. There was the going over the mountains one way and the crossing of the Green and White rivers the other. Both routes in early times required a two day trip. There was a swinging bridge at White River and a ferry at the Green River crossing at Ouray. In later years both were replaced by modern bridges. There were periods during the winter months that one could cross the rivers on the ice, but this could be very risky at times. Much of the time the ice was kept chopped clear so the ferry could be kept operating. One incident that I have known of for many years concerned a fellow who has long since passed on. This man had a load of sheep on a model A Ford pickup. As he pulled onto the waiting ferry he became a little mixed up and excited as to stopping his vehicle. It has been said that he had been used to driving the old model T type Ford car and as he drove onto the ferry he momentarily forgot how to stop the newer and different operated machine. In a matter of seconds he was over the end of the ferry and submerging into the cold icy waters of the river. Those men that were there immediately took up positions along the downward side of the river and on the end of the ferry in hopes of rescuing him should he surface. sur-face. First up came one buck sheep, followed closely by an outstretched arm with fingers grasping for something to hang onto. With the aid of those present he was pulled shivering from an almost certain death and watery grave under the ice of the Green River. He lived to reach a very old age and said some 25 years or so later that he had been through many narrow squeaks, but none that tight. He figured he had had it for sure that time. Speaking of tragedies or near tragedies and sickness, the people of Willow Creek and surrounding areas did not get by without them. Most of the people felt as though they had not suffered as much of this sort of thing as the average people in the more populous communities had done. There was not a lot of sickness, and when there was, they pretty well took care of it themselves. The closest doctor was in Fruita, Vernal, Roosevelt or on occasions oc-casions at Dragon. Some of the women were capable nurses of the day, and many of the old good home remedies were used. Another tragic experience involved a young father and rancher from Hitter Creek who was dragged to death by a horse. Still another involved a fellow who committed suicide by taking-strychnine. taking-strychnine. He was found several days later and had evidently given con siderable thought about the act, because he had played a record on an old victrola at the time he had done the deed. Scratch marks at the center of the record showed that it had turned until the hand wound phonograph had run down. The name of the record was, "What's the use of living." There was another tragic death when a man shot himself at the Santio Bottoms. A young boy drowned in Hill Creek and an older man very familiar to the area and an early mail carrier drowned in the Green River near the mouth of Willow Creek. The Indian people had several tragic things happen to them also. Some c?ses of freezing to death, some of being shot, some of sickness and so on. No community of any size or for any extended length of time is free from misfortunate happenings of some kind. The only diite.-ence is that in a rural area you hear more about it and it seems to strike closer to home because in most cases you know the people involved, or at least know of them. This was especially true back thirty or forty years. There were several men who worked for wages on some of those ranches. Some of the best cowboys in the country. One such individual was a colored man by the name of Charlie Glass. For many years he worked for Turners on upper Willow Creek. He was considered one of the best all-around cowboys that ever set foot in the Willow Creek area. Russel Squire said that Charlie was indeed a top notch hand an commented on how neat and clean he was. Russ said that he was just a boy at the time, but how well he enjoyed being around Charlie. He was real good to the kids and always found a little time fo frolic and joke w ith them. Charlie Glass met with an untimely death in a car accident near Cisco. Utah on Feb. 22, 1937. If you were not familiar with handling han-dling livestock and doing the ordinary ranch type work, you definately had no place in this locality. This was cowboy country. Most days at daybreak and dark before you called it a day. No squabling about an eight hour day or having to pu tin a few extra minutes. Sometimes you missed lunch and there was no such thing as overtime pay. These people worked hard and at times lived hard. They endured weather, good or bad. they suffered miseries and hardships that rrost of us today never knew existed. I was going to say they missed the conveniences as we have them but if you don't know about them, then I guess you can't miss them. But for sure they did not have many of them. No such things as electricity and along with that the appliances that came with it. In later years some modern appliances were brought in that operated on batteries and propane. About the only thing that they had prior to this time was the old hand-cranked phonographs. But they enjoyed life as much as anybody and in some cases, more. When celebrating, they went all out, they enjoyed their get-togethers. They had the respect of each other and anyone that knew them. They were honest and trustworthy. I asked many of these people concerning con-cerning their Indian neighbors and they all expressed how well they got along, provided you treated them fairly and showed no favoritism. If Indian people liked you, they would do almost anything for you. It was a matter of befriending be-friending one another and sharing, as this was home to all. Several Indians lived along or near the various creeks. No story about the Bookcliff area would be complete without mentioning the Indian people who lived there. This country has Ix-en home to them for many years now. Many of the early Indians had been moved there from their homes in southwestern Colorado by the government back in the late eighteen hundreds. Many of them had homes along these creeks. Other spend the summer months in the country and the winters arming the settlement of Ouray. Huge bands of them could be migrating back and forth every spring and fall. The Indians would come by your place and trade for different Items. One tiling they like to get was deer skins which they would trade to the Navajo's for blankets. |