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Show 2 0 SPRING TIMES - MAR 1992 — Interview with Earl Hotz We met with Earl Hotz in his cozy bunker on a windy Sunday. We sat before a limestone hearth surrounded by walls and ceiling of board and log aspen—quakey, as Earl calls it. hay, receiving half of the crop. He laid out the roads we drive on today. Along point y0u’ve got to slow down, even if with used farm equipment, Earl was bunker, Earl enjoys some quiet able to profit from recycling five miles of irrigation pipe he dug out of the pleasures (though still keeping his hand in at swapping, bartering, and trading valley. vehicles)——reading, writing, and After a year of working for the Remnants of Earl’s past as a miner, Carlsberg Company, Earl decided he’d logger, and rancher are carefully like a piece of land. Earl said to Keno displayed on the walls. Humorous labels are written beside old miner’s hats, saddles, and other instruments of torture. We had come wanting to hear from a Castle Valley “oldtimer” about the valley’s history and his experiences here. These are some of his stories: Earl and Nettie came to Castle Valley in 1972 when Earl was hired by Kendrick Bailey and Curly Powell, Lazaris, head salesman, “I’d like to buy a piece of land, just a crummy old lot. I don’t care what it is, just something to tinker with.” Lazaris said he had just the lot for Earl: “Eight acres with a big old arroyo running through it.” Thus began Earl’s and Nettie’s residence on Powell Lane. Earl had spent years as a miner and logger, along the way working in saw scouts for the Carlsberg Company. Earl invested a lot of money in the ranch but was not able to make a go of it. Looking for an out, he sold it through Bailey to Carlsberg, a 40-year-old trailer park tycoon, an avid hunter, and a fair man. The ranch had previously been owned by Bill McCormick, a uranium success along with Charlie Steen. McCormick had attempted to turn Castle Valley into an alfalfa-growing ranch, putting in sprinkler systems, irrigation ditches, and ponds, as well as clearing and leveling to make fields and gardens. Before McCormick Castle Valley had been part of the huge Pace Ranch, the ranchhouse serving merely as a way station for cowboys and cows as they moved back and forth between Earl’s advice from his years in Castle Valley: “Have yourself a stake and some means of income when you come here. You need to be a bit of a pioneer, willing to be flexible, willing to chanbge, to give up some of life’s luxuries to make a go of it here." Earl has seen too many people come with misguided expectations of rural life, or not enough money to get past the startup costs of developing raw land. “Most of these couldn’t stay. It was a pity to see. Build a well insulated home, a itself to acquire a saw mill in a trade, good woodshed, and root cellar. Keep the trash and weeds down for ease of Earl grabbed the chance, setting himself up in business. He proceeded to cut logs, vigas, and boards, supplying many of the first houses in Castle Valley. Always ready for a good deal, Earl said yes when a fellow from Chicago named Higgins offered to build Earl’s house in trade for the saw mill. Earl cut the boards and Higgins built the house. Higgins later moved the mill to White’s Ranch, where it languished with little use. Another trade led to Earl’s acquiring a second saw mill. This was soon bought by Jack Powers, then building his house in Castle Valley. Gold Basin timber was hauled down by Jack, with Earl continuing to run the mill. They supplied logs for Bill Viavant’s, Power’s, and other houses. Recently the old mill was moved to the Seventh Day Adventists property, and the desert and the LaSals. Under his new boss, Earl worked listening to good music. mills. When an opportunity presented was to work on the ranch for a year in order to get a feel for the Valley. The owner at that time was Stanley Gordon, an electrician from Denver. Gordon had you don't want to.” So now, cozy in his they will use it for their own construction. As Earl puts it, “I'm 78. At some the land, cultivating and harvesting the access and fire protection.”Earl's final advice: "Find a good woman." He obviously thinks he has one in Nettie and hopes others will be as fortunate. Earl has lived here for twenty years. In that time, “I’ve never seen any real animosity between people here in the valley.” Earl sees the valley as continuing to develop in positive ways. “It’s a good place to live.” —Joan Sangree Four Fact Intro Several seasons past while searching out new sheep pasture I happened by Blue Creek Ranch on the Dolores River several miles above Gateway and met Hal Ames in the process of planting a garden 3 acres minimum. Hal cradled a hoe in red dirt hands weathered to a “Tony Lama” oxblood buffalo hide sheen and squinted through tamarisk eye- 12 Valley Inn brows under salt prismed brim whose crown read...a a a a nothing. His first three sentences, after perhaps twenty of my own, indicated he was 92 years old, had seen all his schooling in Castle Valley, and had raised sheep for 80. The fourth informed me the last half of his last sheep sat in the freezer contemplating last fall’s Eric Thomson Lynn Forbes Thomson Innkeepers CVSR 2602 Moab, Utah 84532 801—259—6012 slaughter. Interesting . . . on all accounts. —-Anon. (Published through Poetic Journalism License.) |
