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Show Dinosaurland Outdoors By Hart Wixom Vernal Express Outdoors Writer With the 24th of July just passed, I've reflected back on some of the early history around Ashley Valley. And I believe many of those pioneers, settlers, set-tlers, sheriffs and outlaws to be the most knowledgeable outdoorsmen anywhere. They should have been. Their lives usually depended on it. For example, Charles Kelly's "Outlaw Trail" (Robert Redford recently put out a book by the same title) tells of the first time a lawman dared stick his neck in Browns Park. He didn't come in from Rock Springs or Steamboat Springs, Colorado, the other outpost towns closest to the Three Corners area. If memory serves correctly, it was one Sheriff Preece from Vernal. Kelly intimated that most lawmen rode white horses down center of the larger canyons to be easily spotted. They wanted to provide sufficient notice for any outlaw to clear out, saves confrontation. con-frontation. On one occasion a sheriff from then Colorado's Routte County (now Moffat) did have a shoot-out with one of the most dangerous criminals of the late 1800s. But, he escaped jail (not too difficult in the days before federal penitentaries) and went on to not only locate and assault the sheriff, but kill more than another dozen people in the Northwest. His name: Harry Tracy. He was considered, at times, one of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, but he didn't have Robert Leroy Parker's patience with gun in hand. In any event, a man lived by his wits, knowledge of geography, skills with a horse and gun, even if it was to shoot a deer or sage grouse for survival. From Matt Warner, who made his home on Pot Creek along Diamond Mountain, to various lawmen who pursued him, in a day of no FBI crime lab and little county-to-county communication, com-munication, you had to build a fire in the snow, and ford rivers with a pack train. It was much more than merely the fun and games it is today. Several years ago I drove out to . -...'-'. Browns Park with Heber City's Harvey Murdock, now a football official. But, I knew him then as the grandson of Elza Lay and Maude Davis, the latter from Vernal. Harvey was curious to find out what he could about Cassidy's "right hand man," and the "educated outlaw." who worked in the hay fields along the Green River, until meeting Maude, marrying her, and moving on against her will, to a life of crime. But. another thing stood out on that trip Murdock and I made. We camped along the Green River, perhaps not far from the old Valentine Hoy hayfields, and did something the earlier outdoorsmen out-doorsmen couldn't do; caught a 3' j-lb. rainbow trout. In those days, before Flaming Gorge Dam, the Colorado was a sea of mud, "too thick to drink, and too thin to plow." Yet, many who passed that way swam their horses across the river, and according to old-timers, old-timers, Elza and Maude did that to meet the minister who married them on the "other side" of the river There was something awesome about the north side. According to Kelly, a special event took place there toward the end of the 1890s. In the violent and v . "Si Early outdoors people lawless valley, someome died a natural death, the first one Kelly knew about in a hundred years. Of course, part of the problem was that Browns Park grew high, green grass, and was the object of the little man vs. large cattle company fueds of the open range. An even better book than Kelly's to learn about the area was Burrough's, "Where the Old West Stayed Young," a prodigious volume profiling such characters as "Queen Anne" Bassett, and her sister Josie. She lived by admittedly ad-mittedly poaching deer at her outpost north of Jensen, and she never just killed a deer, she always "plugged" them. It is said Josie was known to be living on venison almost exclusively at times, and posed a serious problem for area game wardens who didn't like her example. Nevertheless they didn't want this remnant from the Old West to die of starvation either. Whether they actually "looked the other way" or not is something only the wardens could say. At least they seemed to live in harmony with Josie most of the time. It would be wrong to think these "outdoorsmen" lived only in Browns Park, for the "Outlaw Trail" was a real one which led from Hole-in-the-Wall west of Kaycee, Wyoming down through Robber's Roost on the west side of what is now Canyonlands National Park into New Mexico. Nor is there anything here meant to glorify that day's bandits who robbed, and too often selfishly shot anyone who got in their way, whether in the Book Cliffs crossing on the Green or the military bars surrounding Bottle Hollow country. I have far more respect for the men who sought to bring them to justice, the law officials riding for days into those same Book Cliffs where roads now probe nearly all canyons. They had to take provisions for perhaps a week at a time. In Indian or outlaw country they could not even build a fire which might signal their location. They had no freeze-dried strawberries, or time for fishing, although hunting was often a necessity. Even then, they had, to quarter, clean, skin, and roast the meat, a simple feat then that few modern day city dwellers would even attempt. They had to know horses, too, and be in good enough condition to walk long distances-without getting lost-up or down Willow and Hill Creek, or down Jesse Ewing Canyon, or how to come out at old Charley Crouse's place near today's Swallow Canyon without backtracking. They were outdoorsmen, as were the ranchers, and "sportsmen" of that time. I can't help but think they had something we could utilize more of today. Yup, even some of the outlaws. At least if they couldn't live at peace with people, they had to do so with nature, or perish. Even more so than lawmen whose names are too often forgotten today, while the names of desparados they chased too often remain etched in our minds. But in any case, I believe we can meet nature more harmoniously by reliving some of those bygone days. They may have been richer, and happier, than we realize what with the tough times most of us have today in rubbing shoulders with nature only on weekend. |