The modern history of Canyonlands is as colorful as the canyons
themselves, and involves Indians, cattlemen, bank robbers, cattle
rustlers, and horsethieves, followed by oil drillers, uranium hunters,
potash miners, jeepsters, boaters, and tourists. A brief summary of
their activities is taken mainly from a recent account by Maxine Newell
(1970), to whose work you are referred for further details.
Bands of Ute and Navajo Indians roamed the canyons and mesas until the
late 1800’s, but gradually they were driven out and succeeded by pioneer
cattlemen, the first of whom were George and Silas Green in 1874-75,
followed by the Taylor brothers in 1880-81. Cowboys named many of the
natural features of the area, and the Needles country provided the
scenic background for some of Zane Grey’s western tales and for David
Lavender’s “One Man’s West.” Lavender Canyon, whose headwaters were
recently annexed to the park, was named for him. Visitors to the Needles
district pass the Dugout Ranch about 7 miles northwest of Newspaper
Rock. The earliest ranch dwellings were dirt houses built by the
Somerville and Scorup brothers, who bought the huge Indian Creek spread
for $426,000 from the Carlisle Co. in 1918. In 1973 the ranch was
operated by Robert and Heidi Redd, whose line camp at Cave Spring served
as temporary park headquarters and later was restored to a typical line
camp (fig. 6) as part of the Cave Spring Environmental Trail.
Robbers Roost Canyon and Spring some 30 miles west of the park was the
hangout of a horsethief named Cap Brown in the seventies. From 1884
until about 1900 it was the hiding place for the notorious Butch Cassidy
and his Wild Bunch, who robbed banks, trains, and mine payrolls and
stole or traded horses and cattle from the ranchers. Cassidy and his
gang managed to get along with the cattlemen by either replacing or
paying for most of the horses and cattle, but the law finally drove them
out, and Butch, the Sundance Kid, and a woman named Etta Place moved to
Bolivia. According to the movie version, Butch and the Sundance Kid were
hunted down and shot by Bolivian soldiers for robbing banks and mine
payrolls, but according to Baker (1971) Butch returned safely to the
United States and died in the Northwest in 1943 or 1944, and the
Sundance Kid is reported to have died in Casper, Wyo., in 1958 at age
98. Art Ekker (Findley, 1971, fig. 3), present owner of Robbers Roost
Ranch, which contains the former hangout, commented: “A lot of people
are sure that Butch and his gang buried some money around Robbers Roost.
Every so often somebody turns up with a map or a metal detector and
wants to start digging. They’ve found a lot of rusty tin cans and old
horseshoes.”
[Illustration: CAVE SPRING LINE CAMP. Above, line-camp exterior,
showing entrance and corral; below, interior, showing furnishings
and staple food items kept in stock. Served as regular cowboy line
camp for many years, then as part of temporary park headquarters;
later restored as part of Cave Spring Environmental Trail. A nearby
cave, also in Cedar Mesa Sandstone, contains a spring. (Fig. 6)]
[Illustration: Fig. 6, lower image]
The uranium boom of the 1950’s, touched off by Charlie Steen’s fabulous
Mi Vida mine south of La Sal, Utah, temporarily skyrocketed the
population of Moab and sent uranium hunters into every nook and cranny
of the canyon lands. Many of the jeep trails were first made then, and
landing strips and prospect holes of that period are plentiful. Most of
the prospects were in the Chinle Formation, particularly in the Moss
Back Member at the base, but some were in rocks older than the Chinle,
and some were in younger rocks. The uranium mines in the park are no
longer operating, but production has been resumed in a few mines just
north and east of the park. Information on some of these mines, obtained
from E. P. Beroni (U.S. Atomic Energy Comm., oral commun., Feb. 14,
1973) is given at appropriate places below.
The number of boaters or floaters on the Colorado and Green Rivers is
increasing steadily, and trips by jet boat and other power boats are
available from Moab. Tourist travel over good roads on Island in the Sky
and Hatch Point and by paved road to The Needles also is increasing
steadily. Travel west of the Green River and main stem of the Colorado
River is still restricted largely to a few jeep trails and to hiking or
horseback riding.
[Illustration: Petroglyph]