A GUIDE TO HISTORIC SITES IN BROWN'S PARK
Historical Pictures of Crouse Canyon and Browns Park
by:
Kerry Ross Boren
with:
Lisa Lee BorenBROWN'S PARK INTRODUCTORY
Brown's Park originally belonged to the Indians - the Kohogue or Green River Shoshones. They called it O-Wi-U-Kuts, "Big Canyon," and called the river Seeds-Kee-Dee, "Prairie Hen," later known as the Green River. They lived in the valley more-or-less unmolested until the coming of the Spaniards in the late 1500's. The Spaniards built a fort in the valley, probably near Lodore Canyon, which was burned and its occupants massacred by the Indians in about 1650.
It was nearly 200 years before the Indians saw another white man in the valley. This time it was the American Fur Trappers, arriving in the region in about 1825. The first of these of record was William Henry Ashley, who brought a party of trappers down the canyons of the Green River in two buffalo-hide bull-boats, made by stretching green buffalo hides over a willow frame.
It was on the morning of May 5, 1825 that Ashley noted from his bull-boat that "the mountains gradually recede from the water's edge, and the river expands to the width of two hundred fifty yards, leaving the bottoms on each side from one to three hundred yards wide, interspersed with clusters of small willows."
The party made camp there, probably near the mouth of Red Creek or a little below. On May 7th the men floated ten miles into the valley, where they set up camp "on a spot of ground where several thousand Indians had wintered. Many of their lodges remained as perfect as when occupied. They were made of poles two or three inches in diameter, set up in circular form, and covered with cedar bark."
Next day, Ashley's party entered the Gates of Lodore, and he recorded the following in his journal:
As we passed along between these massy walls, which in a great degree excluded from us the rays of heaven and presented a surface as impassable as their body was impregnable, I was forcibly struck with the gloom which spread over the countenances of my men. They seemed to anticipate a dreadful termination of our voyage, and I must confess that I partook in some degree of what I supposed to be their feelings, for things around us had truly an awful appearance.
We soon came to a dangerous rapid which we passed over with a slight injury to our boats. A mile lower down, the channel became so obstructed by the intervention of large rocks over and between which the water dashed with such violence as to render our passage in safety impracticable. The cargoes of our boats were therefore a second time taken out and carried about two hundred yards, to which place, after much labor, our boats were descended by means of cords.
After three weeks, Ashley and his men abandoned the river and returned to the fur rendezvous held that year at the mouth of Henry's Fork.
Over the next several decades Brown's Park was visited by numerous trappers, including Kit Carson, Uncle Jack Robinson, Joe Meek, Jim Bridger, Jim Baker, Doc Newell, and many others. In the early 1830's, the trappers constructed Fort Davy Crockett in the Park, where a brisk trade was conducted with the Indians and among the trappers.
Perhaps one of the most amazing feats ever recorded among these daring adventurers occurred one winter when the snows were too deep to cross the mountains; Joe Meek and a few of his more daring followers went through the canyons of the Green River by horseback, on the ice, from Brown's Park to present Jensen, Utah, in the Uintah Basin!
The origin of the name "Brown's Hole" remains uncertain. Some attribute it to either "Old Cut Rocks" Brown or Charles Brown, both early trappers; others state is was Henry "Bo'sun" Brown, a member of Ashley's expedition. However, the usual acceptable origin of the name is credited to a French-Canadian fur trapper named Baptiste Brown - real name, Jean-Baptiste Chalifoux, a member of Henry Fraeb's band who battled Indians east of Brown's Park on the Little Snake River. Baptiste built a cabin in Brown's Park where he lived with his Blackfoot wife, and carved his name on some ledges in 1835. He was colorful character, who led a group of horse thieves in California in the early 1830's, and later operated a trading post in New Mexico, and in 1869 built the first house in Trinidad, Colorado. Chalifoux had an adopted son, a hunch-back, who carried a Bible in a ruck-sack over his shoulders everywhere he went. He was a familiar figure in the region for many years, and earned the sobriquet "Bible Back" Brown; some give him credit for attaching his name to the valley.
On May 24, 1869, Major John Wesley Powell - a one-armed veteran of the Civil War - and a party of nine men, left Expedition Island just below the town of Green River City, Wyoming, in four wooden boats named the Emma Dean, the Kitty Clyde's Sister, the No Name, and the Maid of the Canyon. Their intent was to explore the canyon systems of the Green and Colorado Rivers.
Four days later they passed a "brilliant red gorge," which they named Flaming Gorge, and entered the first canyons. On June 1st they entered Red Canyon. Powell wrote: "An old Indian named Pariats told me about one of his tribe attempting to run this canyon. 'The rocks heap high; the water go hoo-woogh' water pony heap buck. Water catch 'em; no see 'em Injun any more! No see 'em squaw any more! No see 'em papoose any more!'"
They entered Brown's Park a few days later. Powell is the first man to record the name as "Park," as follows: "June, 1869 -Brown's Park is a valley, bounded on either side by a mountain range, really an expansion of the canyon." Indeed, Major Powell gave names to many of the landmarks in Brown's Park, and elsewhere along the river system.
June 4, 1869 - A spur of red mountain stretches across the river, which cuts a canyon through it. A vast number of swallows have built houses on the cliffs...We call this Swallow Canyon.
June 7, 1869 - When I came down at noon, the sun shone in splendor on its vermillion walls shaded into green and gray when the rocks are lichened over. The river fills the channel from wall to wall. The canyon opened like a beautiful portal to a region of glory...
One of the boaters, Andrew Hall, remembered the last line of a poem by Robert Southey..."and this way the water comes down to Lodore." So, the canyon was called Lodore. They also gave name to the little stream which enters near the canyon mouth - Vermillion Creek.
Their introduction to Lodore Canyon was violent. One of the boats met with disaster. "I see the boat strike a rock, careen and fill with water. The men lose their oars; she strikes another rock with great force, is broken in two, and the men are thrown into the river. We are as glad to shake hands with them as though they had been around the world and wrecked on a distant coast."
Powell named this place Disaster Falls. One of the crew, Frank Goodman, vowed he had had enough. He left the party there and returned to Brown's Park where he made his home for the rest of his life, leaving his name to Goodman Gulch. He sold his original holdings to Matt Rash.
By the end of August, 1869, Powell and his men, reduced to five in number, walked out of the canyons on the lower Colorado. Two years later, Powell was back in Brown's Park on a second expedition, where he ran into two "Texas gentlemen" named Harrell and Bacon, "and a dozen or so Mexican herders." They were driving a herd of 2200 head of cattle from Texas to California. Powell went on to fame, not only as a river explorer, but as director of the U.S. Geological Survey and the head of documenting Native American culture for the Smithsonian Institute.
Space does not permit a full recounting of the visitors and settlers of Brown's Park. Suffice it to say that the history of this amazing valley spans the history of Indians, the Spaniards, fur trappers, explorers, cattlemen, settlers, outlaws, rustlers, and many others to an extent unknown anywhere else in the American West.
Site - 1 UNCLE JACK'S CABIN
When Flaming Gorge Dam was constructed in the early 1960's, the encroaching waters of the lake threatened the destruction of a landmark at Linwood, Utah, some 35-40 miles west of Brown's Park. The cabin had been lived in by Keith Smith as his home for more than 60 years. It was constructed of hewn logs, dirt roof, and rough board floors. To save the cabin, Mr. Smith had the cabin moved to Greendale and attached to his summer home. It was a propitious and fortuitous move, for the cabin is one of the most famous and most unique of its kind.
Uncle Jack Robinson (John Robertson) came to Brown's Park in 1826-27 with his relative, Kit Carson. He traded with the Indians and trappers at Fort Davy Crockett, and at the various rendezvous held throughout the region. In 1834, Uncle Jack Robinson constructed a cabin on Upper Black's Fork, around which a sizeable Indian settlement grew; today the place is known as Robertson, Wyoming, in his honor. In 1843 Uncle Jack encouraged Jim Bridger to build his famous post near this place.
In 1836, Uncle Jack Robinson constructed the cabin on Lower Henry's Fork, about four miles above its confluence with the Green River, where he lived about six months of each year. When the cabin was built, it was situated in the Mexican provinces. Following the War with Mexico in 1848, it reverted to the Western Territory of the United States. With the advent of the Mormons, it became a part of the State of Deseret, then reverted to the Territory of Utah as part of massive Green River County. For a time it was attached to Sweetwater County, Wyoming, and was reduced thereafter to belong to Summit County, Utah Territory; then, in 1880, became part of Uintah County, Utah Territory, and, at last, on January 7, 1918, became part of Daggett County, Utah - all without ever having moved from its original site!
The cabin is thus the oldest cabin in Utah, and the oldest permanent residence in Utah, and the second such west of Fort Laramie in the Rocky Mountains. It outdates Miles Goodyear's cabin on the Weber River (present Ogden, Utah) by several years.
By virtue of his cabin on Black's Fork, Uncle Jack Robinson was also the first permanent resident of Wyoming, and Robertson was the first agricultural settlement west of Fort Laramie in the Rocky Mountains.
The list of visitors to Uncle Jack's cabin reads much like an American Who's Who: Major John Wesley Powell, Jim Bridger, Jim Baker, Joe Meek, Kit Carson, Major John C. Fremont, Buffalo Bill Cody, Calamity Jane, S.V. Hayden, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Kid Curry, Frank and Jesse James, Sacajawea, Chief Washakie, Chief Walker, Zane Grey - to name but a few.
Site - 2 DUTCH JOHN
Dutch John Flat, Dutch John Gap, and Dutch John township, adjoining Flaming Gorge Dam, are named for "Dutch" John Honselena (Henselini, etc.), an enterprising horse thief who operated a gang of rustlers in that region.
Dutch John Flat was, for many years, the site of numerous corrals made of cedar posts which the Dutch John Gang used to corral their stolen stock. The Flat was once the scene of large herds of roving horses, brought from the three-state area by Dutch John's far-ranging gang of rustlers.
More than one local rancher who tried to range his own stock in the region found himself confronted by Dutch John's armed gang, comprised of a number of Mexicans and renegade whites. Cleophas Dowd, who claimed all the range on the south side of the Green River, had an "arrangement" with the Dutch John Gang whereby neither would cross the river nor molest each others herds or range.
Then one day Dutch John hired an 18 year-old youth named Mark Anson, from nearby Henry's Fork, to tend his herds on Dutch John Flat while he and his gang raided in Southern Utah. They returned late one summer, driving a covey of stolen horses before them. Hot on their trail, but unknown to them, Sheriff William Preece of Uintah County, Utah, led a posse across Diamond Mountain, through Little Hole, then forded the Green River in the canyon and rode up to Dutch John Flat via Dripping Springs.
The Dutch John Gang was taken by surprise. A gunfight ensued on horseback across the Flat westward to Dutch John Gap. Near the latter place, Dutch John Honselena and two of his gang were killed; they were buried near the crest of a ridge near the Gap, among the cedars. The Dutch John Gang was scattered, never more to be heard of.
Mark Anson witnessed the gunfight from a pinnacle above Dutch John Gap, and when the battle was over, he fled on foot across Antelope Flat, swam the Green River, and walked nearly 40 miles up Henry's Fork to his ranch home. The episode convinced the youth to avoid any further connection with outlaws, and in future years, he became a respected lawman in Uinta County, Wyoming, and in Daggett County, Utah.
Site - 3 MINNIE'S GAP
When Mary Crouse Died in Brown's Park in 1902. Charley Crouse gave up his place at Bridgeport and went with his daughter, Minnie, to file on a homestead at Spring Creek Gap - sometimes known as Grindstone Springs - north of Dutch John,, and just east of Linwood, across the Green River. Here Charley Crouse lived until his death in 1906. Charley Crouse was buried in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Mary Crouse, who had originally been buried by the Farm Ford in Brown's Park, was removed from her grave and reburied next to her husband at Rock Springs.
For some years thereafter, Minnie Crouse lived at Spring Creek Gap, and eventually it came to be known after her - Minnie's Gap. When Marius N. Larsen and Keith Smith opened hotels at Linwood, Minnie moved there to operate one. Eventually she married Knud Ronholdt and, later, George Rasmussen. Minnie continued to operate the ranch at the Gap for many years. Eventually it passed through several ownerships to the present Williams family. In its day, Minnie's Gap was a favorite stop-over for travelers between Brown's Park and Linwood.
Site - 4 CHEROKEE BILL PIGEON'S GRAVE
Cherokee Bill Pigeon was a Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma, and a one-time member of the Dalton Gang, who had fled to Brown's Park after killing a man in a gunfight in the Nations. For a time he lived at Little Hole with the Tom Crowley Gang, where they distilled whiskey to sell to the Indians on the reservation at Fort Hall, Idaho, until driven out of Little Hole by Cleophas J. Dowd, who claimed it as his range.
Cherokee Bill was a some-time member of several local gangs thereafter, notably the Bassett Gang, led by impetuous young Ebb "Kid" Bassett. He was a friend of John "Judge" Bennett, until that erstwhile companion was hanged from the gatepost of the Bassett Ranch by an irate mob for assisting Harry Tracy, Dave Lant, and Pat Johnson, after the murder of Brown's Park rancher Valentine Hoy in 1898.
Pigeon had a falling-out with young Ebb Bassett and moved into the sheep-wagon of another friend in a little valley northwest of Clay Basin, which has since been known as Pigeon Basin in his memory. He got into an argument with the sheepherder, who summarily shot him to death, his body falling out of the sheep-wagon and over the wagon-tongue. After an inquest, the body was buried on a nearby knoll.
That was not the end of Cherokee Bill Pigeon's story, however. Ebb Bassett, who was feeling irate about being cheated out of his revenge upon Pigeon, for real or imagined wrongs, found a posthumous vengeance. A Rock Springs doctor had offered a reward for a human skull to complete a skeleton he was constructing for display purposes. Kid Bassett saw his opportunity. He rode to Pigeon Basin, dug up Cherokee Bill's body, and cut off the head.
Carrying the severed head in a gunny-sack, Bassett stopped at Jesse Ewing's old abandoned cabin and put the grisly relic into a pot on the stove, to boil away the skin. While waiting, Bassett took a blanket outside and spread it beneath a cedar tree and lay down in the warm sunshine to take a nap.
Meanwhile, four or five of Bassett's friends rode up Jesse Ewing Canyon from Brown's Park, looking for him. Seeing the smoke coming from the cabin, the men stopped and went inside, waiting for Bassett to return. After a while, Ebb Bassett awoke from his nap and sleepily ambled back into the cabin, where his friends awaited, seated at the little wooden table.
"Well, hello, Ebb," said Joe Davenport, one of the men. "We helped ourselves to some of your soup; hope you don't mind!"
Site - 5 CLAY BASIN
Anyone who has attempted to negotiate the muddy roads of Clay Basin after a rain storm will appreciate why it bears the name, for the muddy clay is nearly impassable. However, the actual origin of the name comes from John Clay, Wyoming cattle baron, before the turn of the present century. Clay operated the great Middlesex Land & Cattle Company.
This small basin on the northwest rim of Brown's Park has had a long and varied history. In 1849 a group of Cherokees, displaced from their homeland in Georgia, migrated along the "Trail of Tears" to Oklahoma, and then to California. They camped for a time in Clay Basin, before going "down in" to Brown's Park to spend the winter before continuing their arduous journey. Several of the tribe died and were buried in Clay Basin, several more in Brown's Park, and others later drowned while fording the Green River when they renewed their march.
In 1865, Clay Basin served as a military camp for a company of engineers and cavalry under Major Noyes Baldwin out of Fort Bridger. Major Baldwin had been commissioned to build a military road through Brown's Park to Colorado. Later, he established a camp at the mouth of Red Creek in Brown's Park, several miles above (west) the Jarvie ranch.
In later years Clay Basin became renowned for production of oil and natural gas. It is notable that the first oil well to produce oil in Clay Basin was brought in through the efforts of William Ellsworth "Elzy" Lay, former member of the Wild Bunch. When Lay was released from prison in New Mexico a few years after the turn of the century, he became an oil geologist for several major companies.
Site - 6 JESSE EWING CABIN
After crossing Red Creek and leaving the eastern end of Clay Basin, visitors to Brown's Park enter the upper reaches of Jesse Ewing Canyon. At the top of the canyon, a few yards west of the road, are the ruins of Jesse Ewing's cabin, constructed in 1868.
Jesse Ewing was a native of Pennsylvania who came West to seek his fortune around the mining camps of South Pass and Atlantic City, Wyoming. At some point in his early travels, Ewing had an encounter with a grizzly bear which disfigured his face so badly that he was known as "the ugliest man in South Pass City."
At South Pass, Ewing had an argument with a man named Coulter over a mining claim which resulted in Coulter landing in the South Pass City jail. The jail had only one cell, with a barred window high on one wall, and Ewing stationed himself on a high knoll close by and shot at Coulter through the bars.
Old Jesse fled southward to Green River City where, not long after, he learned that Coulter had settled. Once again Ewing determined to kill his foe. He learned that Coulter was on his deathbed in a cabin on the edge of town, and wanting to cheat the Grim Reaper of his prize, commenced to shoot at Coulter again through a window. Jesse must not have been much of a shot, for he succeeded only in putting several bullets into the logs several inches above Coulter's head. This time it was Old Jesse who went to jail.
Upon his release, Ewing learned that H.M. Hook, first mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and several companions, were proposing an expedition southward to the Uintah Mountains in Utah to prospect for gold. Jesse decided to join them.
At that time the Union Pacific Railroad was building its way across Wyoming, and the men stole a few railroad ties which were being floated down the Green River from the Wind River Mountains, and constructed a raft. With it, they floated down the Green River, starting a mile of two south of Green River City.
Leaving in the middle of the night to insure secrecy, the raft was loaded with adequate provisions for a lengthy prospecting trip. But they were not long underway when disaster overtook them. In Red Canyon the raft broke up on a rock, submerged and hidden by high and muddy spring water, and Hook was drowned. His body was washed up on a sandy beach a few miles below where it was recovered by his companions, and as soon as they emerged into Brown's Park, they buried it on the south bank of the river, near the ruins of old Fort Davy Crockett.
Hook was the moving force behind the expedition, so when the party reached Brown's Park, they abandoned the project, and all of them except Jesse Ewing returned overland to Green River City. For several weeks Ewing poked around the hills at the western end of Brown's Park, and finally discovered a showing of copper ore at the upper end of Red Creek Canyon - thereafter known as Jesse Ewing Canyon.
J.S. Hoy, early Brown's Park rancher, wrote about Ewing that "he was a hard worker...In the course of time he dug a tunnel about 500 feet in the mountainside in an endeavor to reach the rich copper vein that, according to all indications, he knew to be there. Jesse was what is usually described as of powerful build, 175 pounds, slightly stooped, and about fifty years of age. He was accustomed to outdoor life, and capable of physical endurance in proportion to his size and strength. During the years I knew him, I never saw him with a coat on. He was a quiet man, slow of speech; a man who was not quarrelsome nor ever interfered with other men's affairs unless they crowded him...He did not mix much with his neighbors; in consequence he was left pretty much alone. Coupling what people did not know about him with what they did know, they concluded he was a good man to keep away from..." William G. Tittsworth, another early Brown's Park resident, described Ewing as being a "brown-baked, moody, odd freak of humanity, who cared but little for his own life, and less for the lives of others."
Being perennially hard up for funds with which to purchase such necessary supplies as blasting powder, caps and fuse, and groceries, Ewing perfected a technique for extracting money from strangers. He took them into partnership one at a time, putting both the man and his money to work, and when the money ran out, he picked a quarrel with the partner and ran him out of the country with gun or knife. Whoever refused to leave, mysteriously disappeared. Then Jesse would visit Green River City or Rock Springs to take on another partner.
About this time there arrived in the area a brash young prospector named Charles Robertson (called Robinson) who staked some mining claims in the same vicinity. Not only that, but Robinson had the unnerving habit of sitting atop Table Rock and spying on Ewing through field glasses. Old Jesse got so nervous, he constructed a log cabin over his mine shaft to hide his activities from view. Ewing highly resented the intrusion.
That winter the two chanced to be in a poker game together in the old rock saloon (ruins of Fort Davy Crockett) above the Jarvie place, and Ewing lost a bundle to the youth. Shortly afterwards, when crossing the river on the ice, Jesse Ewing stabbed young Robinson to death. Then Ewing stuck his head through the door of John Jarvie's little store, saying: "Go on up the river a ways Jarvie, and you'll find the purtiest corpse you ever saw."
According to J.S. Hoy, when John Jarvie investigated, he "found Robinson stretched out full length, dead, stabbed to the heart. Where Robinson came from nobody seemed to know. I believed Jesse had some sort of judicial examination before a justice of the peace, claiming self-defense. There being no witnesses to the tragedy, the defendant was discharged." John Jarvie, Brown's Park's unofficial undertaker, brought Robinson's body down-river and buried it on the hillside behind his store.
Among those Ewing had lured to his mine and bilked of their money, was the Negro rustler Isom Dart. This took place shortly after Isom's arrival in the country, and it caused bad blood to exist between the two. As it happened, fate landed them together in jail at the same time! This occurred at the time when Ewing was jailed for the attempt on Coulter's life at Green River City. Isom Dart was thrown into the cell on suspicion of murder following the disappearance of his erstwhile employer, a Chinese cook at Carmichael Gap, who vanished after a fracas over a crooked card game in which the young Negro lost several hundred dollars. When Ewing and Isom were thrown together in the same cell, bets were taken on which one of them would emerge alive in the morning.
During the night, Ewing beat the Negro into submission with his boot, and in the morning Old Jesse forced the young black man to get down on his hands and knees while Ewing ate his breakfast off his back, there being no table in the cell. Shortly thereafter, Coulter having died of natural causes and the Chinese cook having reappeared unharmed, both men were released; but bad blood continued to exist between them, and, for the most part, they gave each other wide avoidance.
Then one day Isom Dart rode up to Jesse Ewing's cabin in the company of Cleophas J. Dowd, and the two men called for the grizzled old character to come out. Ewing came outside and demanded to know what the two interlopers wanted. Dowd was the spokesman on this occasion. He was a partner with Lewis Allen in a ranch above Red Canyon (the present Swett Ranch) and claimed all the range on the north slope of the Uintah Mountains for fifty miles westward from Brown's Park.
"I found your horses on my range above Red Canyon," Dowd said, "and I drove them off."
"Where in hell did you drive them off to?" asked Ewing, getting red in the face.
"I drove them off the cliffs of Red Canyon into the Green River," Dowd retorted matter-of-factly. "Their carcasses should come floating by any day now."
With that, Ewing exploded, grabbing Dowd and pulling him off his horse to the ground. At the same time, Jesse pulled a large skinning-knife from a sheath between his shoulder blades, and attempted to cut Dowd's throat. He succeeded only in cutting a deep gash across Dowd's right cheek, when the latter pulled his gun, and, from a prone position, shot Ewing in the groin.
Leaving Ewing writhing on the ground in a pool of his own blood, Dowd and Isom Dart rode down the canyon and notified John Jarvie of the incident. Jarvie hitched up his wagon and drove up the canyon to retrieve the body for burial, but to his amazement, found Jesse Ewing very much alive, but in great agony. He loaded the tough old character into the wagon and took him home with him, where he nursed Ewing back to health.
Not long thereafter, on another of his trips to Green River City, Ewing made the acquaintance of a red-haired woman known as Madame Forrestal, and convinced her to accompany him back to his cabin as his nurse and companion. Nothing is known of Madame Forrestal, except that at one time she had been a contortionist in a circus sideshow.
Things went well enough for a time until one day a young man named Duncan arrived in the Canyon, one jump ahead of the law. Noting his muscular build, Ewing asked Duncan if he would like to do some mining, and Duncan, exchanging meaningful glances with Madame Forrestal, allowed as how he would. A partnership was formed, openly, between Duncan and Ewing, and secretly between Duncan and the Madame.
One day Duncan informed Ewing that he was sick, and wouldn't work in the mine tunnel that day. Jesse took his lunch-pail in hand and trudged off alone up the trail, while Duncan spent a leisurely day alone at the cabin with Madame Forrestal. That evening, as Jesse Ewing plodded back down the trail towards the cabin, Duncan ambushed him, shooting him several times with his own Winchester, one shot nearly decapitating him. He died in 1885.
No one knows what became of Madame Forrestal. Duncan headed down the outlaw trail to southern Utah, where he killed himself several months later. The body of Jesse Ewing was brought on its final ride out of the canyon by John Jarvie, and buried, ironically, in a grave next to his victim, Robinson.
Some time before his death, Jesse Ewing sent some ore samples out of Brown's Park with his prospector-friend, Pick Murdock, to be assayed in Denver. After his death, the results came back, showing that Ewing had struck it rich! However, the secret of the location of the fabulous vein of gold and copper ore died with Old Jesse. Since that time, the "Lost Ewing Mine" has been searched for, in vain, by thousands.
Site - 7 BAKE OVEN FLAT
At the base of Jesse Ewing Canyon there is an alluvial fan, caused by intermittent floods which, in years past, roared out of the canyon, depositing silt on the valley floor on the north bank of Green River. Here, as early as 1879, Dr. John Parsons, a recent newcomer to Brown's Park from Denver, where he minted gold coins, erected several ore kilns, from which the Flat received its name.
Today, visitors to Brown's Park, entering via Jesse Ewing Canyon, cross over Bake Oven Flat without recognizing anything significant there, except for a few sagebrush. However, from very early years - 1826 onward - this place was a burial ground for Indians, trappers, and, later, outlaws and ranchers.
Over a period of time, evidence of the graves became obliterated by weather and neglect, until few of them can presently be discerned. Nevertheless, a survey of historic sites in the Park made some years ago, noted that there were two trappers of the old American Fur Company, several children of Squawmen Jimmy Goodson and Jimmie Reed, and three Mexicans killed in a gunfight with members of the old Tip Gault Gang.
A walk among the sagebrush will reveal rounded stones marking some of the lonely and forgotten graves.
Site - 8 JARVIE RANCH & MUSEUM
Just below the mouth of Red Creek, where it empties into the Green River, in the western (Utah) end of Brown's Park, lies the remnant of the old John Jarvie Ranch, on the north bank of Green River.
John Jarvie, the amiable Scotsman, immigrated from Scotland with a kinsman, George Law, to Rock Springs, Wyo., where he engaged for a time in the mercantile business. Sometime between the years 1876 and 1880, both Jarvie and Law migrated "down in" to Brown's Park. Jarvie constructed a rock house on the bank of the river and began a small store and post office there. The post office, "Brown's Park, Utah," was established on February 14, 1881, at Bridgeport (Jarvie's ranch) with John Jarvie, Sr, as postmaster. His office was abolished on June 8, 1887. For two years, Brown's Park was without a post office, until the post office of "Lodore, Colorado" was established on June 3, 1889, and on January 8, 1890, Herb Bassett became postmaster.
John Jarvie was one of the most beloved and revered residents of Brown's Park, and his ranch and store at Bridgeport was, for many years, the hub of the community. Frequently, Herb Bassett would load his organ into a wagon and bring it to the Jarvie place, where John Jarvie would pound out more than a hundred different tunes, all played by ear, accompanied by Herb Bassett on the violin, to which the young people danced, while the women-folk prepared a midnight supper.
In addition to being rancher, postmaster, store-keeper and entertainer, Jarvie operated a ferry across the Green River, was station-keeper for a stagecoach line from Colorado to Brown's Park, and served as unofficial undertaker and some-time doctor for want of these services. Brown's Park's only actual doctor, Dr. Parsons, died 1879. Thereafter, Elizabeth Bassett performed this duty for residents in the Colorado end of Brown's Park, while John Jarvie served the Utah end.
During the 1890's, Jarvie's little store became the supply point for Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch and other outlaw gangs which used the Park as a refuge from the law. On at least two occasions, Jarvie permitted Butch Cassidy to hide out in the root cellar a few yards west of his store.
Jarvie's store continued to supply Brown's Park with the necessities of life until several years after the turn of the century. He never turned anyone away. It was difficult to find anyone who did not like the amiable old Scotsman; but there was one who didn't.
One day in early July, 1909, C.M. Taylor and his family were staying overnight with the Harold King family at Bridgeport. Just after sundown, while C.M. Taylor was chopping wood at the woodpile, a man rode up, whom he recognized as a newcomer to Brown's Park named George Hood. Hood asked if he might stay the night. Taylor told him that he was guest there himself, but there was no more room. He suggested that Hood ride on up the river to Jarvie's, where he would likely find a bed for the night.
"Well, I guess I don't have much choice," Hood said sullenly. "But I don't know if the old son-of-a-bitch will let me stay there or not."
On the afternoon of July 6, 1909, young Jimmy Jarvie, the old man's youngest son, rode up to the store and tied his horse to the hitching rail, expecting his father to step out of the door to greet him, as was his custom. But the old man did not appear, so the boy walked to the door and went inside, to find the place in total disarray. A meal, apparently prepared earlier, had not been cleared from the table, on top of which were three plates and an open jug of whiskey.
Searching the grounds, Jimmy saw drag marks and dried puddles of blood in the dirt, leading toward the river. He found a patch of long, white hair snagged on a bush beside the river path.
As it neared sunset that same day, C.M. Taylor and Gordon Wilson were putting up hay in the Park Livestock Company fields; Charley Taylor's wife, Nina, who was pregnant, was in the house on the Tolliver place, several miles up-river; his son, Jesse Taylor, was hunting rabbits nearby with Walter Hanks, Jr. Taylor and Wilson stopped working when "Luckin" Bill rode up fast.
"It's old man Jarvie fellas. Somethin' bad has happened. I just saw Nina. She said Jimmy Jarvie was at the house wanting a gun. Nina said he was in an awful state and she was afraid to give him one. She said Jimmy told her he thinks somebody has robbed and killed his dad!"
The word spread fast throughout the Park and by morning most of the Jarvie boys and Park residents had gathered to decide what to do. All brought their guns with them, but they were concerned that there was a shortage of ammunition among them. They rode en masse to the Jarvie place and began piecing things together.
It was learned that the day before Harold King and his wife had seen two men walk out of Jesse Ewing Canyon and head toward Jarvie's place. It became apparent that these were the two men who had eaten from John Jarvie's plates, drank from his jug, robbed him, murdered him, and apparently threw him in the river.
Someone noticed that several ropes and a pair of hobbles were among the missing items, and it was surmised they were planning to steal a couple of horses upon which to escape. They had robbed Jarvie's safe and were hauling some grocery items, and the men assembled believed the killers must still be in the area. The mood among them was sullen and mean. One of them cried out:
"To hell with the law! After we capture those two birds we'll strip them and put 'em naked in the willows of the river bottoms. We'll leave the buggers there for the mosquitoes to eat on until they confess. And when they do admit to it, by damn, we'll hang 'em from ferry cable post!"
As a body the men tracked the fugitives until they found the rope and hobbles in a pile in a draw below Bridgeport. The trail from that point indicated that the men had gone out of the Park directly by way of Jesse Ewing Canyon. The pursuers stopped at the mouth of the canyon, afraid that to enter, especially being short of ammunition, might subject them to ambush.
John Jarvie, Jr. volunteered to go alone to notify the sheriff in Rock Springs to be on the lookout for the murderers, traveling by way of Red Creek Canyon, rather than by Jesse Ewing Canyon. The rest of the makeshift posse returned to the Jarvie place, built a raft, and dragged the river in search of the old man's body, with no success.
On the next morning, July 8th, Harold King's brother, Bill, returned from a freighting trip to Rock Springs to learn what had happened.
"Well, hell, I saw them," he exclaimed. "Both when I was headed to town and then again when I was on my way back. I never saw the one fellow's face because he never came near. But I talked to the other man both times. When I saw him the first time, he said they were headed down here to look for jobs. Then yesterday he said they had both changed their minds and were going to Rock Springs to find work on the railroad. I think most of you know him, it was George Hood."
Hood's partner in crime proved to be his brother-in-law. They had arrived at Rock Springs about one o'clock in the morning, and both checked into the Park Hotel. The Vernal Express, dated July 23, 1909, stated:
One of them left a call for seven o'clock in the morning; the other was heard to get up about 10 o'clock. The latter had inquired about the first train east and had been told it would pass through about 11 o'clock. John Jarvie, Jr. had reached Rock Springs at about 10 o'clock that morning to give the alarm; but it took an hour or so before he could get hold of the officers, and in the meantime, the two fellows had gotten away.
Meanwhile, in Brown's Park, the search for John Jarvie's body continued. Eight days after the murder, and twenty-nine miles downstream, Archie Jarvie found his father's swollen body, tied and still bound to his overturned rowboat; one of his arms had entangled in the willows. He was buried in the nearby Lodore Cemetery.
With the discovery of the body, the story of how John Jarvie died emerged. The two men had first beaten the old man, ostensibly to secure the combination to his safe. Apparently he would not give it, and they struck him over the head. The old man had run outside, and one of the men had shot him in the back, between the shoulders. Still not dead, he had then been shot at close range through the side of the head. He was then dragged by the heels along the path around the house, across the west step, out the west gate and past the old cellar where he and Nell had made their first home, and where he had hid his old friend, Butch Cassidy, and then dumped into the rowboat. The body was tied to the boat, and the boat was kicked adrift onto the river. The two men then robbed the safe and took what they wanted from the store and home.
Jarvie had recently been to Rock Springs to make his deposits and the safe contained only a hundred dollar bill. In their haste, Hood and his cohort overlooked a cigar box full of change on a shelf, but they rifled Jarvie's trunk and stole his Pearl-handled .44 six-shooter, together with other items.
Later it was learned that George Hood had gotten off the train for a short stop at Point of Rocks east of Rock Springs, where he pawned the six-shooter and a new pair of shoes. He was overheard asking if anyone could change a hundred dollar bill.
The people of Rock Springs offered a $500 reward for the killers, and Governor Cutler of Utah put up an additional $500. Nevertheless, George Hood and his brother-in-law had vanished, and by the middle of August, the posse had given up their search.
Jimmy and Archie Jarvie were determined never to rest until they brought their father's murderers to justice. They followed them to the East, then back to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and then to Pocatello, Idaho. Archie went to work in the coal mines in Idaho to gain information on Hood and his partner, whom they suspected worked there under assumed names; but not long after, Archie was killed in a suspicious mining accident. Jimmy Jarvie caught up to them in a hotel in Pocatello, but was thrown from a second story window, and died instantly of a broken neck.
Tom Jarvie went to Idaho to retrieve his brother Jimmie's body, then set out on the trail of the killers himself. He traced them to Chicago, and reportedly lost them. However, in later years, Tom would wryly smile and say that it was just possible that vigilante justice had been exacted.
Tom Jarvie eventually took his father's cattle into the Dutch John area where he ranged them for several years. He then married Alice Finch, half-breed daughter of Henry's Fork cattleman George Finch, and bought a ranch near Linwood, Utah.
John Jarvie Jr. remained in Brown's Park. He didn't want the store and tried to sell it. Charlie "Whitey" Roller lived there for a while and considered buying the store and reopening it. One of his more memorable characteristics was that he always took two steps backward to spit. For a time he "sparked" Elmer Bradshaw's daughter, Bessie.
One winter Whitey started to ride his favorite horse, Pap, across the river on the ice, but it was too weak; horse and rider fell in and went under the ice. Whitey managed to save himself, but Pap was trapped in the bitter cold water and killed. For the remainder of the winter, Pap's frozen head could be seen protruding above the ice.
The Jarvie place seemed cursed, and rumors were rampant that old John's ghost was haunting the place, irate because someone was trying to take his place in the store. One day Whitey was examining the guns in the store when one of them misfired, blinding him in one eye. He was convinced that the place was jinxed, married a Templeton girl from Maybell, Colorado, and moved away to Vernal.
John Jarvie Jr. eventually tore down the store and the home, and with the help of his retarded uncle "Crazy" Jarvie, he replaced the old home with a five-room whipsawed log house. He and his wife, Ollie Mae, spent most of their time at the "Little" Jarvie place on lower Beaver Creek. In 1924, John Jr. sold the place to Charlie Sparks.
The front page of the Vernal Express, July 30, 1909:
It is hard to imagine John Jarvie dead. Harder still to think of him murdered. He was the sage of the Uintas, the genius of Brown's Park. He could almost be called the wizard of the hills and river. He was not only a man among men, but he was a friend among men...
He kept a ferry; but he was more than a ferryman; he kept a store, but he was not circumscribed by the small scope of a store-keeper. He as a broad and generous as far reaching in his good deeds as the stream which he knew and loved as a brother and over whose turbulent waters he had helped so many travelers and upon whose unwilling bosom he was set adrift to seek an unknown grave...
Behind the Jarvie house and rock-store, now a visitor's museum kept by the Bureau of Land Management, are at least six graves, two of which are those of Jesse Ewing and his young victim, Robinson.
Nearby can be seen the remnants of an old stagecoach, one of the last to run in Brown's Park, and surrounding these, bordering upon the slow-running Green River, are the ranch's out-buildings. One grisly relic to be seen here is the gatepost, which formerly framed the gate of the Bassett Ranch, from which an angry mob hanged Jack "Judge" Bennett in March, 1898. Bennett, a fringe member of the Wild Bunch, had attempted to aid Harry Tracy, Dave Lant and Pat Johnson following the murder of fifteen year-old Willie Strang, by Johnson, on February 28, and the murder of Valentine Hoy, a member of the pursuing posse, by Harry Tracy.
Most of the preservation efforts were due to the foresight of Duward and Esther Campbell, owners of the Jarvie property for many years. Following the death of Duward, Esther Campbell, turned the property over to the BLM who presently maintains the museum and visitor's center there.
The stone building, erected in 1881 as a store-house for the original Jarvie store, which now houses the visitor center and museum, was constructed by none other than John Bennett, who was later hanged at the Bassett ranch.
Site - 9 FORT DAVY CROCKETT
There is strong evidence that a Spanish Fort may have been erected in Brown's Park, probably near Lodore Canyon, prior to 1650. In that year, according to Spanish archives at Madrid, the Indians burned the fort, and a series of others, and massacred the Spaniards. There is no record of another Fort in Brown's Park for nearly 200 years.
Space does not permit a full recounting of the white fur trappers who visited Brown's Park during the interim. The earliest visit of record was by General William H. Ashley of the American Fur Company, who navigated the canyons of the Green River in buffalo-hide "bull boats" for some three weeks in 1826.
Between 1826 and the late 1840's, Brown's Hole was an important fur trading center. Among the trappers who stationed themselves there were: Uncle Jack Robinson; Joseph "Joe" Meek; Robert "Doc" Newell; and Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson. Kit Carson arrived in Brown's Hole (prior to becoming known as Brown's Park) with "Uncle" Jack Robinson - probably his cousin - in 1829.
Kit Carson was born in Kentucky the day before Christmas, 1809, a son of Lindsey and Rebecca Robinson Carson. He moved with his family to Missouri when he was a year old. When he was nine, his father was killed by a falling tree-limb while burning timber. Kit Carson wrote:
For fifteen years I lived in Missouri, and during that time I dwelt in Howard County. I was apprenticed by David Workman to learn the saddler's trade, and remained with him two years. The business did not suit me and, having heard so many tales of life in the mountains of the West, I concluded to leave him. He was a good man, and I often recall the kind treatment I received at his hands. But taking into consideration that if I remained with him and served my apprenticeship. I would have to pass my life in labor that was distasteful to me, and being anxious to travel for the purpose of seeing different countries, I concluded to join the first party that started for the Rocky Mountains.
On October 6, 1826, David Workman offered a one cent reward for the return of Kit Carson, but the youth was already on his way West in the caravan of Charles Bent to Santa Fe. In 1838 Kit Carson, now a full-fledged Mountain Man, attended the rendezvous on the Popo Agie River in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. Carson wrote:
In twenty days the rendezvous broke up, and I and seven men went to Brown's Hole, a trading post, where I joined Thompson and Sinclair's party on a trading expedition to the Navajo Indians. We procured thirty mules from them and returned to Brown's Hole. After our arrival Thompson took the mules to the South Fork of the Platte, where he disposed of them to Sublette and Vasquez and returned with goods suitable for trading with the Indians. I was now employed as hunter for the fort and I continued to this service during the winter, having to keep twenty men supplied with meat. In the spring of 1838 I joined Bridger.
The fort mentioned by Kit Carson was Fort Davy Crockett, built by William Craig, Phillip Thompson, and a man named St. Clair (Sinclair) in the early 1830's, and named in honor of Davy Crockett, recently killed at the Alamo.
A description of the fort has been left by Thomas Jefferson Fairham, leader of the Oregon Dragoons, who visited there in August 1839:
The dark mountains rose around it sublimely, and the green fields swept away into the deep precipitous gorges more beautiful than I can describe. The Fort is a hollow square of one-story log cabins, with roofs and floors of mud, constructed in the same manner as those of Fort William (William Bent's Fort on the Arkansas). Around these we found the conical skin lodges of the squaws of the white trappers, who were away on their "full hunt," and also the lodges of a few Snake Indians, who had preceded their tribe to this, their winter haunt.
Here also were the lodges of Mr. Robinson, a trader, who usually stations himself here to traffic with the Indians and white trappers. His skin lodge was his warehouse, and buffalo robes were spread upon the ground and counter, on which he displayed his butcher knives, hatchets, powder, lead, fish hooks, and whiskey. In exchange for these articles, he receives beaver skins from trappers, money from travelers, and horses from the Indians.
Thus, as one would believe, Mr. Robinson drives a very snug little business. And, indeed, when all the "independent trappers" are driven by approaching winter into this delightful retreat, and the whole Snake village, two or three thousand strong, impelled by the same necessity, pitch their lodges around the Fort, and the dances and merry makings of a long winter are thoroughly commenced, there is no want for customers...
There is in this valley a fruit called bulberry...of these berries I obtained a small quantity, had a dog butchered, took a pound of two of dried buffalo meat which Mr. St. Clair kindly gave, and on the morning left the hospitality of Fort David Crockett.
Dr. F.A. Wislizenus, who would become U.S. Minister to Turkey in 1854, arrived at Fort Crockett less than a week after Farnham, has recorded a somewhat diminished opinion of the Fort than his predecessor:
The fort itself is the worst thing of the kind that we have seen on our journey. It is a low one-story building, constructed on wood and clay, with three connecting wings, and no enclosure. Instead of cows, the fort had only some goats. In short, the whole establishment appeared somewhat poverty-stricken, for which reason it is also known to the trappers as Fort Misery.
The last rendezvous held in Brown's Hole was in November, 1842. William T. Hamilton, an eye-witness, recorded what occurred:
Several traders had come from the states with supplies, and there was quite a rivalry among them for our furs. Bovey and Company were the most liberal buyers, and we sold them the entire lot. Besides the trappers, there were at the rendezvous many Indians - Shoshones, Utes, and a few lodges of Navajos - who came to exchange their pelts for whatever they stood in need of. Take all in all, it was just such a crowd as would delight the student were he studying the characteristics of the mountaineer and the Indian. The days were given to horse racing, foot racing, shooting matches; and in the evening were heard the music of voice and drum and the sound of dancing. There was also an abundance of reading matter for those inclined in that direction.
After 1842, Fort Davy Crockett fell quickly into decay and disuse. When John C. Fremont, with Kit Carson as his guide, passed through Brown's Hole a few years later, he merely noted "the ruins of an old fort" on the left bank of the river, and nothing more.
There remains much dispute as to the location of Fort Davy Crockett in Brown's Park, most scholars preferring to believe the logical situation would have been near Lodore Canyon, in the Colorado (eastern) end of the Park, where the valley is wide and filled with lush meadows.
However, all available evidence indicates that the fort was in the Utah (western) end, and on the south bank of Green River, opposite the mouth of Red Creek. Dr. Wislizenus gives the best evidence, describing his route from the west, coming down Red Creek Canyon, and seeing the fort as the first landmark encountered upon entering the valley.
Farnham, too, describes the fort as enclosed about by mountains, "...The dark mountains rose around it sublimely..." Anyone familiar with the early fur trade will also realize that forts were seldom built in the fields and meadows, which would have destroyed valuable grazing.
Moreover, early settlers were familiar with the ruins across from Red Creek, just above the Jarvie place, which consisted of two or three log cabins and an old rock house. There were no windows in the rock building, having only slits in the rocks about six inches wide and two or three feet in length, about the size for several rifle barrels to fit through. It was utilized as a saloon, but had been constructed from the ruins of Fort Davy Crockett by Major Noyes Baldwin in 1865, to protect the military road which crossed the river at Indian Crossing, then went up Jackson Draw and on to Ashley Valley. Major Baldwin's report, in the National Archives, confirms the location of Fort Davy Crockett at this place. His report states, "...we constructed a stone blockhouse, for the protection of supplies, from the foundations of an old trapper's fort which formerly stood at this place, several cabins, still in evidence."
In 1902, Charley Crouse and a few others tore the upper stones from the walls of the ruins and tossed them into the river above Indian Crossing to divert water from the Green River into irrigation ditches. Charley's daughter, Minnie, reported in later years that John Jarvie, Sr. had taken her to the site in 1906 and pointed it out as the ruins of Fort Davy Crockett, and showed her the grave of H.M. Hook, which is nearby. Minnie also confirmed that her father, Charley Crouse, had told her his "ditch" was made by damming the river with stones from "Old Fort Crockett."
One who should have known, having been there during its heyday, was the old Trapper and squaw man Jimmie Reed, who reported to members of his family that old Fort Crockett was "about two or three miles west of my claim," i.e. the Crouse ranch.
The last vestiges of a recognizable Fort Davy Crockett disappeared in the early 1930's when, as a part of Roosevelt's Civil Conservation Corps efforts to provide job projects, the last remaining stone remnants were thrown into the river to create a diversion irrigation dam. A line of stones may still be seen in the river bed at periods of low water.
Site - 10 HOOK'S GRAVE
In 1867, as the Union Pacific Railroad pushed its way westward to a union with the Southern Pacific near Promontory Point, Utah, the camp at Cheyenne soon burgeoned into a full-fledged city, and needed a mayor. The man elected was H.M. Hook.
Hook's term was short-lived, however, and by the spring of 1868, he had moved on with the railroad to Green River City, Wyoming. Here, Hook joined Jesse Ewing and others in a prospecting expedition southward to the Uintah Mountains.
The raft upon which they sailed down the Green River, made of railroad ties, lashed together, struck a submerged rock in Red Canyon, and Hook was thrown into the muddy waters and drowned. His body was recovered by his companions a few miles below, and when they emerged into Brown's Park, they buried it several yards east of the ruins of Fort Davy Crockett, on the south bank of the Green River.
The gravestone, marked by a stone, was pointed out and identified by John Jarvie to Minnie Crouse Rasmussen in 1906. By some accounts, the gravesite is identified as being that of Charles Robertson (Robinson) who was killed by Jesse Ewing on the ice of the river. However, Jarvie indicated quite clearly that he brought Robinson's body back to his store for burial. Moreover, Hook could not have been buried at the Jarvie place, as some believe, inasmuch as Jarvie had not yet arrived in Brown's Park at the time of Hook's death.
Site - 11 DOC PARSONS GRAVE
On June 22, 1854, Warren P. Parsons and his wife, "Snapping" Annie, arrived in Brown's Park. Annie was the first known white woman in Brown's Park. Uncle Sam Bassett noted in his diary: "Man's freedom in paradise is doomed." Warren P. Parsons was the father of Dr. John D. Parsons.
Dr. John D. Parsons was born at Quincy, Illinois, on February 26, 1818. He came West in 1858, four years after his father settled in Brown's Park, and operated a ranch at what is now the central part of Denver.
Losing a large fortune in the construction of a large irrigation project, Dr. Parsons left Colorado in 1862 and settled on the Green River below Green River City, Wyoming. Here he became a successful cattleman and established a ferry on the Green River over which many travelers on the Oregon Trail crossed.
In 1865-66, Dr. Parsons returned to Denver where, in 1866, he aided in establishing the Colorado Stock Growers Association, and compiled the by-laws of that association. He was also a mine and smelter owner, and brought the dies to Denver which established the Denver Mint. He aided in the minting of $2.50 and $5.00 gold coins. He also operated a dairy in the vicinity of the present Denver Stock Yards. The 1872 directory of Denver lists Dr. John D. Parsons as a practicing physician at Spring Bank House.
Dr. Parsons moved to Brown's Park between the years 1874-76, and maps of the A.D. Ferron Survey, dated August 15, 1878, showed the location of his cabin in Section 36, Township 2 North, Range 24 East, Salt Lake Meridian.
Dr. Parsons constructed his cabin near the mouth of Sears Creek, near its confluence with the Green River. Constructed between 1874-76, the cabin was 15 x 33 feet, of logs hewn to the square, with a frame gable roof of sawed boards. The cabin consisted of two rooms, but unexplainedly there were no doors in the partitions separating the rooms.
Forty-five feet east of the cabin is a 7 x 10 feet log cabin springhouse, over a natural cold spring. This building is reconstructed, the original having been of logs with a dirt roof. Sixty-five yards west of the cabin is a 15 x 18 feet log structure which served as a blacksmith shop. The logs were joined with saddle-notching, with a roof of cedar and cottonwood poles covered with dirt.
A third cabin was separated by the Doc Parsons cabin and the blacksmith shop by a small grove of fruit trees surrounded by a fence. It lies 85 yards south-southwest of the Doc Parsons cabin, and is 15 x 18 feet with a front porch on the east constructed circa 1920, and was used as a bunk and guest house. Fifteen yards east of this cabin is a rock-faced dugout used for storage. Two houses built circa 1930 and a windmill used to produce electricity have since been torn down. These structures sat on a total area of 2.5 acres. The claim had originally been part of that belonging to the squaw man, Jimmie Reed. Prior to the arrival of Dr. Parsons, old Louie Simmons, son-in-law of Kit Carson, had resided there in a wickiup.
Dr. Parsons' wife was named Daphne Dunster Parsons; they had a daughter, Helena, born in California Gulch, Colorado, on May 17, 1861, and a son, Warren D. Parsons, on August 11, 1879. Helena Parsons married Lewis Allen, who later operated a horse ranch with Cleophas Dowd between Eagle and Cart Creeks, above Red Canyon (later called Greendale). Lewis Allen was born in Wales in 1847, was orphaned at an early age, and brought to the United States by Mormon converts when he was eleven. In later years he was a merchant and postmaster at Ashley (Vernal) and eventually went to Pinedale, Wyoming.
When Dr. John D. Parsons died (by some accounts 1879 - by others 1881), he was buried about ½ mile north of the cabin. An infant daughter of Lewis and Helena Parsons Allen is buried next to her grandfather. Upon the occasion of Dr. Parsons' death, J.S. Hoy wrote that it was the first "natural" death in Brown's Park - a somewhat dubious tribute to its violent history. The Parsons family left Brown's Park in 1884.
After the cabin was vacated, it became a favorite stop-over for travelers along the Fort Bridger - Green River City to Vernal road. The cabin also became a temporary residence for various persons, including many of the transient outlaws who inhabited the Park. The McCartys resided there for a time, as did Butch Cassidy, the latter of whom carved his name on a ledge of rock not far from the cabin.
Matt Warner resided in the cabin during the winter of 1895-95 with his wife, Rosa Rumel, and young daughter, Hayda, while he developed his ranch on Diamond Mountain. It was at the springhouse at the Parsons place that Rosa, who was pregnant at the time, slipped on the wet slope and fell, injuring her hip, which resulted in the cancerous growth with caused her leg to be amputated, and from the effects of which she subsequently died.
In November 1896, Etta Place, Maude Davis, and Elzy Lay celebrated their birthdays in the cabin (their birthdays being close together), while Cassidy and Lay finalized the organization of the Wild Bunch. That same winter, the two young women would "honeymoon" with Cassidy and Lay at Robbers Roost.
In 1901 the Chew family lived in Doc Parsons cabin when they first arrived in Brown's Park, and when the Charles Taylor family arrived in 1904, they, too, lived there until they constructed a spacious house nearby. Marie Taylor married Bill Allen, and they built a home and ranch headquarters across the river, and preserved many relics from the Parsons and Jarvie places. To Marie Allen goes extensive credit for the preservation of many historic sites in Brown's Park, including the Parsons cabin. Unfortunately, not long after getting the cabin on the register of historic sites, it was burned to the ground by parties unknown.
Site - 12 GOODSON - HERRERA CABIN
Juan Jose Herrera dressed and acted the part of a gentleman. He was lighter skinned than his Mexican companions, and he made it known that he was the descendant of pure Castillion aristocracy, and the fact that he often acted the part with fiery temperament had gotten him into trouble more than once.
Juan couldn't help but get involved in the war between the United States and Mexico, and a year after the war started he became involved in the deaths of three prominent men, including a militia officer in the New Mexico territory. Realizing he would have to leave the area, he encouraged some of his Mexican followers to accompany him, using as inducement and old map from an early expedition of his ancestors, to the gold mines of the Uintah Mountains of Utah. He promised his brother Pablo and the other Mexicans that they would find the gold, build a rancho, and maybe an empire - over which he would, of course, rule, due to his royal blood.
Driving a large head of cattle before them, made even larger by rustled cattle picked up along the way, Juan Jose Herrera and his band arrived in Brown's Hole in 1847. When they settled at a spring at the base of O-Wi-U-Kuts Mountain (later, this became the Bassett Ranch), giving Brown's Hole its first permanent cattle herd, the Mormons were trekking north of there, on their way to Salt Lake Valley. But Herrera's dream of starting his own empire busted a year later when, in 1848, Brown's Hole was included in the land ceded to the United States by Mexico.
Headquarters for Herrera's "rancho" was merely a cabin at Joe's Spring - he was called "Spanish Joe" to his face, "Mexican Joe" out of hearing - which housed Joe and eight or ten of his band. They built a dam across Vermillion Creek in an effort to irrigate some cleared ground.
In the summer of 1867 a party of Mormon prospectors who had spent the winter on Willow Creek, a tributary of the Sweetwater River in Wyoming, returned to Fort Bridger with $15,000 in gold from the Carissa Lode. A rush of 200 Mormons and Gentiles flooded to South Pass. By 1868, thousands flocked to South Pass City, Atlantic City, and Miner's Delight, and among them was Mexican Joe. With a pair of sturdy oxen and a wagon, he began hauling freight from the newly constructed Union Pacific Railroad to South Pass City.
Here he made an unlikely friend in Asbury B. Conway, a down-on-his-luck attorney from Iowa. Conway, who was born October 13, 1837, in McLean County, Illinois, and moved with his family to Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, completed the four-year liberal arts program at Wesleyan University in three years. He received his LLB degree from the University Law School in 1860. For a time he served as justice of the peace at Mt. Pleasant, where he earned the title "Judge," and for a time was a school teacher.
The Civil War saw him serving as a captain, and at its close, he was promoted to major for "meritorious conduct." He returned to his law practice and soon held a seat in the Iowa State Legislature. Although the reason is unknown, Conway was soon after in Wyoming, drunk a good part of time, and broke. It was then that he struck up a friendship with Mexican Joe.
Joe fell for the charms of a pretty saloon girl who swindled him of his wagon, oxen, and money, and left South Pass hurriedly. His ego crushed, Joe began to drink and gamble to excess. He became morose and dangerous, and the local citizenry wanted rid of him, but didn't dare attempt to make him leave. They hired a tough Negro to do the job.
The adversaries met in a saloon. Joe, as was his custom, sat at the table, running his knife slowly back and forth across the whetstone, his cold eyes making the black man sweat with nervousness. The war of nerves continued at length until the Negro got up quickly to depart. Joe pulled hi gun and shot the man in the heel of the foot. Although Joe hadn't intended to kill his adversary, blood-poisoning soon set in, and the man died. Joe fled back to Brown's Hole, accompanied by his new friend, Judge Conway.
Conway brought a few tears to Joe's eyes every time he played his violin, and Indian children, attracted to the strains of music, came around to dance. But Conway, ever enigmatic, soon left Joe's camp to ride with the Tip Gault Gang along the Overland Trail. Eventually, Conway moved to Green River City to practice law, quit drinking (somewhat), became Sweetwater County Attorney and, eventually, Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court. He dressed even then in his shrunken buckskin trousers, worn Prince Albert coat, and top hat. He occasionally returned to visit Brown's Park, usually staying with the Bassett family.
Even before the Bassetts settled at Joe's Spring, Mexican Joe and his group had removed up the valley to a cabin on Willow Creek. It was here that the famous fight between Mexican Joe and Valentine Hoy occurred (See Hoy Site 16).
Mexican Joe was eventually killed in 1885 and his murderer, Juan Gallegos was tried before Judge Conway. Gallegos was sentenced to five years in the Wyoming State Prison at Laramie. He was age 60. Pablo Herrera, Joe's brother, after running away briefly with Maggie, the wife of George Baggs, returned to Brown's Park where he was shot and killed by Cleophas J. Dowd in a dispute over a horse race on the Crouse ranch; he is buried on the flat a few yards southwest of the Crouse ranch house.
After Mexican Joe's departure, his cabin on Willow Creek was taken over by Jimmy Goodson and his wife, Mary Jane "Molly." They raised a patch of vegetables, a passel of kids, and a menagerie of hogs. Some of the latter escaped and ran wild, wallowing in the mud of nearby Hog Lake, which takes its name from them.
Site - 13 KELVINGTON'S GRAVE
George Kelvington was an old Brown's Park bachelor. He was an old soldier who raised fruit including nectarines, at Birch Springs on Beaver Creek. For many years he lived a solitary existence in an old cabin on the upper reaches of Willow Creek, near the foot of Cold Springs Mountain. His only companions, for as long as anyone could remember, was an old horse and an old dog. The horse was too sway-backed to ride, and the dog so old and infirm that he could not walk. When both died within days of each other, old George was heart-broken.
Someone took pity on the old bachelor and brought him a puppy to keep him company. After a year or so, the two were inseparable companions. Shortly after the turn of the century, Minnie Crouse, who was homesteading at Grindstone Springs (Minnie's Gap) with her father, Charley, began to wonder why she had not seen George Kelvington in several months.
She decided to go down to the Park and pay him a surprise visit. As she rode up to the little cabin, Minnie could hear the dog barking wildly inside, and noticed that it was leaping frantically against the window. Alarmed, she summoned up enough courage to peer through the window, and what she saw remained a gruesome memory for the rest of her life. On the bed in the otherwise scrupulously neat cabin was the dead body of George Kelvington, torn and mangled and half-eaten by the starved dog.
Minnie rushed down to Willow Creek Ranch for help. The men who came back with her assessed the situation and decided the dog would have to be shot. There was no telling, they avowed, whether or not the dog was mad, or whether having tasted human flesh it might not attack a child, or even a man. One man cautiously opened the door while another shot at the dog as it ran out. But in his anxiety, the man's aim was bad, and he missed, and the dog yelped off into the cedars.
Turning their attention from the dog to Kelvington's body, the men broke out shovels and began to dig a grave. Minnie perched herself on a nearby rock to watch the men at work. Suddenly she felt a wet tongue on her elbow, and she leaped up in prickly fear; there was the dog, wagging its tail in friendly anticipation.
The dog didn't appear to be mad, but they agreed that it might still be dangerous, so at last they shot it. Then they buried Kelvington; but before they covered the grave, they laid the dead
dog beside its master, and buried them together. They deduced that old George Kelvington wouldn't hold a grudge against the only friend he had, and would not object in death to the companionship of one he had sustained, by his own flesh, in life.
Site - 14 CASSIDY RACECOURSE
In 1885, Robert Leroy Parker - soon to be famous as Butch Cassidy - was a youth of nineteen. That same year he arrived in Brown's Park from Telluride, Colorado, and went to work for Charley Crouse, just as the latter had arranged a horse race between his sorrel gelding and Ken Hatch's much-touted black mare. Crouse could see that young Cassidy knew horses, and he hired him to ride the sorrel gelding. The race was run on an old Indian Track at Valentine Hoy's ranch. Cassidy, and the sorrel, won, and Crouse threw a big spread at Charley Allen's place, to celebrate.
After a while, someone noticed that the young hero of the occasion was not present. Mary Crouse went out to the bunkhouse and there found him all by himself. He declined to join the celebration, saying he wasn't much for partying. She finally urged him to come in and at least get a bite to eat, which he did, but remained only long enough to finish up his plate, before returning to the bunkhouse.
Charley Crouse was an inveterate horse-racer and gambler. Next to dancing, horse racing was the favorite pastime in Brown's Park. Whenever any group of men got together, the topic of horseflesh was bound to come up, and if a man ever got hold of a good horse, he couldn't wait to try it out against the established champion. Discussion inevitably led to argument and ultimately to a challenge, the setting of a time and place, and to heavy betting.
Each contestant went through an elaborate ritual of oating, grooming, and training, to put his mount in top condition; and, just as important as the horse was its rider.
For many years Phil Mass had the fastest horses around, beating out all comers. This had rankled Charley Crouse for a long time, and he determined to do something about it. Crouse went into partnership with Aaron Overholt to purchase a renowned race horse called the "Brown Stud." Young Cassidy had recommended the purchase of the Brown Stud, suggesting that under certain conditions this horse could beat Mass' famous champion, "Sorrel Johnny."
Crouse spared no expense. Cassidy had intimated that Mass' horse had always prevailed because he ran on a grass-track, such as the one most frequently used on the Hoy Meadows. He suggested to Crouse that he should make a dirt track of a quarter-mile length, with an extension at one end to be used as a starting line; i.e., the riders would race together towards the actual starting line, and if they were even when they reached the line, the race would continue to a finish.
Crouse located a flat stretch of ground on the north bank of the Green River, just east of the confluence of Beaver Creek with that stream. He hired Speck Welhouse to plough and harrow the track, and by July 4th, the day of the big race, all was ready.
Cassidy was hired to ride the Brown Stud against Mass' champion. He spent several weeks oating and training the horse on the fresh track, always in the strictest secrecy. On the day of the race, hundreds of people congregated from as far away as Rock Springs, Vernal and Steamboat Springs. The big race was enhanced by a day-long barbecue, an evening dance, and a midnight supper.
Betting was never heavier than on that day. Crouse promised Cassidy a new Winchester as a bonus if he won the race. The race was close - the Brown Stud nosed out Mass' champion for a win, and Cassidy became the hero of the day. That night he collected his wages and his new rifle, attended the midnight supper, and went to sleep in the bunkhouse. In the morning, he was gone. Such was his way.
For many years thereafter, races were held on the track near Beaver Creek, and it was ever afterwards referred to a "Cassidy's Racecourse."
Site - 15 MEXICAN GRAVES
Shortly after the year 1890, Sheriff John T. Pope at Uintah County, Utah, became the first sheriff brave enough (or foolish enough!) to venture into Brown's Park to make arrests. At first, it was not easy.
Buckskin Ed Carouthers was a bad man by any standard. He was called Buckskin Ed because he always wore buckskin trousers that were bent stiff at the knees making it appear that he was always ready to jump. He carried two long-barreled six-shooters, and was constantly in trouble with the law.
Sheriff Pope found Buckskin Ed holed up in a cabin on Beaver Creek, and waited all night; when Ed came out early in the morning, Pope arrested him at gunpoint, handcuffed him, and headed south towards Vernal. They had to cross the Green River in a rowboat at Parsons Ford, just above the Crouse Ranch. Pope tied the horses behind the boat, settled his prisoner inside, and seated himself with his back towards Buckskin Ed in order to row.
At a point mid-way of the river, when Pope was occupied in rowing, Buckskin Ed pulled his pocket knife and plunged in into the sheriff's throat. Pope drew his six shooter and fired over his shoulder, striking Ed in the face with the bullet, which sent him toppling into the river, gushing rivulets of blood. Pope tied his handkerchief around his throat to contain his own wound, and continued on to Vernal.
At Vernal, Charley Crouse asked Pope what had happened to Buckskin Ed, whom he was supposed to bring in. Pope shrugged and replied, "the last time I saw him he was on his way to Arizona." Thereafter, anyone who disappeared in Brown's Park was said to have "Gone to Arizona." A year or so later, Speck Welhouse found Buckskin Ed's body in a pile of driftwood in Lodore Canyon.
In 1893, Pope added insult to injury by moving into Brown's Park and starting a ranch on Red Creek, above the Jarvie place; Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay were frequent visitors there, maintaining a respectful friendship with the Sheriff. Other outlaws, however, resenting the sheriff's presence in their midst, placed a reward of between fifteen hundred to four thousand dollars on Pope's head. From that day onward, Sheriff Pope became the target of numerous ambushes.
One such ambush occurred as Pope entered Brown's Park one morning via Sears Canyon. A shot from a rocky ledge shot Pope's horse through the head, bringing both horse and rider to the ground. Pope jerked his rifle from the saddle scabbard even as he fell, and lay flat on the ground behind his dead horse. He tossed the flap of his saddle blanket over the barrel of the rifle, and waited. The ambusher kept firing bullets into the body of the horse in an effort to penetrate the carcass and hit the sheriff. Upon getting no return fire, the ambushed raised his head slightly above the rocks to survey the scene, at which time Pope shot him through the head.
On the bench a mile or two southwest of the Davenport Ranch, are the graves of two Mexican horse thieves killed by Sheriff Pope. Sheriff Pope of Uintah County, Utah, and Sheriff Charles W. Nieman of Routt County, Colorado, trailed three Mexican horse thieves to a cabin just below the Davenport place. Finding them asleep, Pope yelled, "Hands up!" Only one obeyed; the other two reached for their rifles, and Pope killed both instantly with his Colt's six-shooter.
The third Mexican took advantage of the confusion to leap onto a horse and ride away, amidst a hail of lead from the guns of the two sheriffs. One of the bullets struck its mark, but still the lawmen trailed the bandit more than sixty miles before they found him dead in an abandoned log cabin. Sheriff Pope's report stated succinctly: "Died on the trail from wound he received by resisting arrest." John T. Pope died at Vernal, Utah, on January 1, 1943, at the age of eighty-three.
Site - 16 HOY RANCHES
Perhaps the most prime meadow-land in Brown's Park lay along the Green River in the eastern (Colorado) end of the valley, just before the river plunged into the yawning maw of majestic Lodore Canyon. These lush lands, known as Hoy Meadows or Hoy Bottoms, were the domain of the Hoy brothers' ranches.
The Hoy brothers originated in Hoy's Gap, Pennsylvania, and came West about the time of the opening of the transcontinental railroad to seek their fortune. The first of the family to come West was J.S. (Jesse) Hoy, who arrived in Brown's Park in 1872 and spent the winter.
Among other residents in the Park at that time were George Baggs and his common-law wife, Maggie, she being the second known white woman to venture into that wild and pre-eminently male domain. Maggie had eyes for Pablo Herrera, a member of the Mexican gang headed by his brother, Juan Jose Herrera - better known as Mexican Joe. When George Baggs went south for another herd in 1872, Maggie stayed behind with Pablo.
Juan Jose Herrera was probably the best - or at least the most effective - knife fighter in northwestern Colorado. Awake or asleep, Mexican Joe carried a ten-inch knife in a sheath between his shoulder blades, where he could retrieve it by pretending to scratch his neck. Often he would hone the knife while arguing with an adversary, ending the dispute abruptly with a deadly assault. Sometimes it was a threat calculated to intimidate; sometimes the threat was carried out.
When J.S. Hoy came to Brown's Park, Mexican Joe monopolized the Indian trade. The Indians came to Hoy with prime buckskins, saying "Joe heap steal." Mexican Joe took exception. Early in the summer of 1873, while Hoy was away from the Park, Mexican Joe and his gang, on their own initiative, proceeded to harvest a quantity of hay along the river bottom with scythes, which they stacked in Hoy's corral without his knowledge.
When Hoy returned in the fall of 1873, Mexican Joe demanded payment at the highly usurious rate of $15.00 a "cord" - Joe being unfamiliar with any other form of measurement. Naturally Hoy refused to pay, and Joe was upset, this being the third effrontery he imagined he had suffered at the hands of the young rancher. Hoy then added insult to injury by bringing in a horse-drawn mowing machine - the first of its kind in Northwestern Colorado - and putting up as much hay in one day than Joe and all his friends had accomplished in two weeks of hard labor.
At about the same time, Hoy discovered one of his fattest steers missing. Accompanied by one of his cowpunchers, Hoy rode into the Mexican camp on Willow Creek and began to examine brands on discarded hides. Concerning this, Hoy wrote:
"If a bomb had been thrown in their cabin and exploded, it could not have created greater consternation and call to arms; a worse insult could not have been offered Joe or any other horse or cattle thief. They surrounded me chattering and jabbering in their own language, of which I understand but little, Joe saying: 'You t'ink me steal, eh? Examine de hides! Look more! Here is annoder one,' and like exclamations. He fairly danced in his rage, while his eyes scintillated steel and lightning."
Mexican Joe, as he was prone to do in such circumstances, took out his long knife and began to hone it. The sight of it, wrote Hoy, "had a tendency to make cold chills run up and down one's back, and gooseflesh crawl.." Hoy's companion quickly retreated, but Hoy brazenly attempted to ride out the situation, and probably would have been killed if not for the timely intervention of Asbury B. Conway, who had some influence with the Herrera gang. Hoy was permitted to leave, but Joe's pride had been injured and he had no intention of letting the matter lapse. With innuendoes, half-threats, and strong hints, he kept the war of nerves alive: "...after bearing the mental strain as long as I could," wrote Hoy, "I concluded discretion was the was the better part of valor, and without telling anyone my intentions, one day...I saddled my horse and started back for my old camp on Bear River...As an emergency existed, it did not take me more than fifteen minutes to get ready..."
J.S. Hoy then reveals a startling commentary on the extent of his manhood: "I arrived in camp (on Bear River)...at the close of the fifth day of my journey. I changed places with Valentine, who, the following morning, started for Brown's Hole, where he arrived in good time..." Hoy obviously had no qualms about sending his brother back to face the danger from which he himself had fled.
J.S. Hoy obviously lacked something in physical courage, but the cause is known. Coming from a well-to-do family, Hoy had been sent to Paris, France in his youth to further his education. Sexually precocious by his own admission, he was caught in the act of intercourse with the wife of a man who, accompanied by two medical students, castrated him on the spot. Therefore, when, forty years later, during the course of a fist-fight, Hi Bernard referred to Hoy as a "damned old steer," it was not simply a figure of speech.
Valentine Hoy had known Mexican Joe at South Pass City during mining days, and was well aware of his reputation. Valentine Hoy was a very innocuous character, and Joe believed him to be easily handled. Indeed, with his arrival in Brown's Park, even more of the Hoy cattle disappeared.
Valentine surprised Mexican Joe by confronting him in the midst of his gang at Jimmy Goodson's cabin on Willow Creek and charged him with the theft of the cattle. Joe, of course, started honing his knife. Suddenly he called Hoy a lying S.O.B. and lunged at him with the knife, but Valentine adroitly dodged the downward thrust and slugged Joe soundly on the jaw with a hay-maker punch. Mexican Joe went down, and Hoy pulled his own knife from a sheath in his boot. Hoy "aimed with one slash to rip the Mexican from end to end. As the blow was descending, two or three men...caught his arm so that the blow only split one of Joe's buttocks...this laid Joe up for a month or two..."
Mexican Joe had been humiliated by a mild-mannered man much smaller than himself, and in a medium where he had formerly considered himself supreme. J.S. Hoy summed it up thusly:
"The news of Joe's defeat...spread rapidly throughout the country where (he) was known, all predicting that one of the other would be killed the first time they met, with heavy odds that Joe would come off the winner. They avoided a chance meeting by keeping away from the neighborhood of their respective camps. The inevitable meeting took place at last near the Hoy camp at the head of Willow Creek while the summer roundup was there. Of the fifty men that composed the roundup force, Joe was the quietest and most peacefully inclined. All he wanted was to make a treaty with his late antagonist. He had met his match."
Meanwhile, J.S. Hoy had purchased a small ranch near Evanston, Wyoming, and ingratiated himself with officials of the Union Pacific Railroad to the extent that he was elected to the Wyoming Territorial House of Representatives. Ultimately, he rejoined Valentine in Brown's Park; thereafter Mexican Joe and his henchmen bothered the Hoys no more.
In 1875, the Hoys were joined by a third brother, A.A. (Adea) Hoy, and by their uncle, Frank Hoy. The Hoys, having subdued the Herrera influence, set about making Brown's Park their exclusive preserve, making enemies of many old settlers and relative newcomers to the vicinity.
It was Elizabeth Bassett who, resenting the Hoys' manorial ways, created an organization loosely known as "The Bassett Gang," to bring the Hoys down a notch or two. They set about to burn the buildings on the Hoy ranch, after which they held a big celebration at the Bassett ranch.
Henry Hoy was the prosecuting witness who brought the arson charge against Angus McDougal, Isom Dart, and Jack Fitch, while Adea Hoy charged McDougal and Dart with altering brands on three of his horses. Among witnesses subpoenaed for the defense were Elizabeth Bassett, Sam Bassett, Jr., and Thomas Davenport. Angus McDougal was convicted on both counts and was sentenced on October 8, 1890 to serve five years in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Isom Dart escaped from the Hahn's Peak jail and was never brought to trial, and the indictment against Fitch was quashed.
The power of the Hoys was at an end, however. After the untimely death of Elizabeth Bassett by appendicitis, on December 11, 1892, at the age of 37. J.S. Hoy is quoted as saying: "We came to Brown's Park to run the nesters out. We started it, but Elizabeth Bassett finished it, and she finished it good!"
Site - 17 RASH RANCH
Madison M. "Matt" Rash was born near Acton, Hood County, Texas, on January 4, 1865. His mother, a younger sister of the famous Davy Crockett, died when Matt was twelve years of age, and he left home not long after, and for the next few years wandered the Southwest. Sometime in the early 1880's, he showed up in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma in a shiny new buggy with bright yellow wheels, driving a pair of high-stepping sorrel trotters he allegedly had stolen from a banker of Arkansas.
William G. "Billy Buck" Tittsworth, an early resident of Brown's Park, wrote that when Rash appeared in Oklahoma, he had "no particular home and a self-oiling tongue...had plenty of money, dressed well...and was a lady's man from way back." One blossoming young thing who caught Matt's eye was a pretty Indian girl named Mincy.
Mincy was the half-breed daughter of a Shoshone woman named Tickup, by her white trapper husband. Tickup had then become the woman of an Indian named Pony Beater. Pony Beater disliked Mincy because her father had been a white man, and whenever he became drunk on Mexican Joe Herrera's trade liquor, he would beat up on Mincy; when Tickup tried to protect her child, he beat up on her too.
It was while Madame Forrestal was shacked up with Jesse Ewing that Tickup and her child came on foot to Jesse Ewing's cabin seeking help. Pony Beater would soon be after them, on horseback, as soon as he sobered up. It had happened before. It was the spring of the year, and the Green River was in full flood; they needed help in getting across before Pony Beater caught up to them. Madame Forrestal did not hesitate to lend them one of Ewing's best ponies.
Having been given a good meal and fortified with extra food, warm clothing, and matches, Tickup and Mincy were able to ford the river, where they left Ewing's horse and continued on foot. They were soon taken by a squaw man named Ike Frop who had a camp, with several other squaw men, at Charcoal Bottom, a long day's ride up the Green River. Tickup and Mincy were hoisted aboard two of Frop's horses and brought to his camp.
In addition to Frop and his squaw, there were also at Charcoal Bottom a man named Fogarty and his Shoshone wife, Billy Buck Tittsworth, and Isom Dart. For some weeks they had been engaged in rounding up wild horses into cottonwood-log corrals, and breaking them as saddle and pack animals, for which there was a good market. Isom Dart - who was then known as Ned Huddleston - was an expert horse-trainer, and later trained get-away mounts for the Wild Bunch. Before long, Tickup and her daughter moved into Isom's wickiup and set up housekeeping.
Isom Dart was happier than he ever had been in his life. In Tickup's pretty little nine-year-old daughter he found someone he could truly cherish, and who returned the affection he lavished upon her. Then one day one of Isom's friends reported that the Ute Indian Pony Beater was aware of Tickup's whereabouts, and was on the warpath. Isom packed up his little family and headed for the hills; but Pony Beater, an excellent tracker, was soon on their trail.
Isom was a huge man of six feet two inches, with a forty-six inch chest and a thirty-two inch waist, and one would think he could take care of himself in any situation. But Isom was a black man, a former slave, whose insidious memories of his origin caused almost immediate obedience to others. Consequently, when Pony Beater rode into his camp demanding that the Negro deliver over Tickup and Mincy, he did so without argument. Furthermore, Pony Beater forced him to lie on the ground beside a cedar log, and made Tickup hog-tie him with leather thongs. Isom's friends found him there after Pony Beater had departed with Isom's tepee, his possessions, and his little family.
As soon as they were back in Brown's Park, Pony Beater commenced to get drunk, and beat Tickup and Mincy nearly to death. While he was sleeping off this binge, Tickup nearly severed his head with his own butcher knife, then packed up a considerable amount of plunder on several horses and set out with Mincy to her own people in the vicinity of Fort Hall, Idaho. Tickup soon took on a new lover of her own race.
By this time, Isom had regained his resolve, and set out with Tip Gault, Casimero, Terresa, and several other of his friends to retrieve his possessions, and, at least, little Mincy, whom he missed. Isom overpowered Tickup's young Shoshone lover in his wigwam, and was straddle of him, reaching for his knife in his belt, when Tickup knocked him cold with a stone axe, the blow severing all of his left ear except the lobe. He thereafter narrowly escaped being burned alive at the stake in the Shoshone village.
Isom Dart then joined the Tip Gault Gang, and, in August 1875, raided the Anderson horse herd and walked away with five fat money belts from the proceeds. Learning that the ex-Arkansas convict Jack Bennett was using, Tickup and Mincy in connection with his business of peddling liquor to the Shoshone Indians, Isom paid Claude Casebeer to spirit them away to Oklahoma. Mincy was there placed in a boarding school, and Isom footed the bill. Not long thereafter, he joined them in Oklahoma, where he and Casebeer raised cotton in the Indian Territory.
Thus matters stood when, as it has been related, the prepossessing young Texan named Matt Rash appeared on the Oklahoma scene. As soon as Rash began paying attention to Mincy, Isom Dart became irate; but this was Oklahoma, and Isom Dart, unable to cross the color lines, was unable to interfere. However, Claude Casebeer stepped in, receiving two black eyes and several knife cuts for his trouble. Then one morning, Matt Rash, with Mincy at his side in the fancy buggy with the sorrel trotters, disappeared from Oklahoma.
When Matt Rash next appeared some weeks later at Trinidad, Colorado, somewhat the worse for wear, Mincy was not with him. What happened to her is unknown, but old Tickup had died of smallpox shortly before their departure, and it was supposed that Mincy had contracted the same symptoms of the dread disease, and that Matt Rash had abandoned her to a grisly death on the prairie.
Isom Dart and Claude Casebeer set out on Rash's trail, but in the Texas panhandle Casebeer dropped out; Isom followed Rash back to Brown's Park, where, quite ironically, they both found work with John Clay's Middlesex Cattle Company, Rash as a range-foreman, and Dart as a horse-wrangler. Although bad blood existed between the two ever after, Isom never tried to exact vengeance upon Rash - again, the Negro's former slave training intimidated him against going after a Southern white man.
After a few months, Matt Rash left the Middlesex and went to work for Tim Kinney. Isom Dart made the acquaintance of the Bassetts, and soon moved to the ranch, cutting firewood, carrying water, cooking and tending to the five small Bassett children, whom he adored, having probably replaced his affection for Mincy.
When Kinney's Circle K outfit went out of business, Matt Rash showed up in Brown's Park driving more than seventy head of cattle which numbered only four cows, all the rest being young stock. He picked a piece of ground two or three miles west of Joe's Spring (where the Bassett's settled) and built a cabin on it. Soon he was "solid" with the Bassetts, and Elizabeth Bassett even gave him a fine sorrel filly which became his favorite saddle horse.
Quite early on, Matt Rash became very attentive to pretty Ann Bassett. A few weeks prior to Elizabeth Bassett's untimely death in the autumn of 1892, the following item appeared in the Craig, Colorado Pantograph:
The Misses Bassett and Mr. Matt Rash arrived in the city Monday from Brown's Park. The young ladies are here for the purpose of attending school, and are stopping at the home of Mr. Joe Carroll.
The romance of Matt Rash and Ann Bassett, "Queen of the Cattle Rustlers," was the talk of Northwestern Colorado, and, following Ann's brief romance with outlaw, Elzy Lay, she and Matt Rash were engaged. Matt had arrived on the scene when Ann was four years old, but Elizabeth Bassett liked him, and prior to her death had picked him out for her daughter Ann. They became engaged to be married in 1897, when Ann was 19, and Rash was 32. The Craig Courier of January 9, 1897, reported:
Those from Brown's Park who enjoyed the hospitality of J.W. Lowell, Jr., and wife of Lily Park on Christmas day were: James McKnight and family (he married Josie Bassett).
Misses Ann Bassett and Blanche Tilton, and Messrs. Sam and Elbert Bassett, and M.M. Rash...They reported a most enjoyable affair, having been entertained with a sumptuous dinner, a Christmas tree, and a very pleasant dance...
Then, suddenly, on July 10, 1900, Matt Rash was shot to death in his cabin by the notorious Tom Horn; Rash's favorite sorrel mare, the one given to him by Elizabeth Bassett, was also shot. Not long after, on August 11, 1900, Horn also killed Isom Dart as he emerged from his cabin on Cold Springs Mountain.
It is doubtful that Ann Bassett's love for Matt Rash was genuine while he lived, but he had hardly been interred when, on August 1, 1900, through her attorney, Wells B. McClelland of Steamboat Springs, she filed a Petition for Letters Testamentary in the Routt County Probate Court. Matt left a substantial estate, for the time, which consisted of his ranch and some 600 heard of cattle, as well as personal property. At the time of his death, the cattle were mortgaged to the First National Bank of Rock Springs in the amount of $6,000.00.
Ann claimed that Matt Rash, to whom she claimed relationship as "his betrothed wife," executed his will on May 20, 1900, leaving everything to her, and had given her the paper for safe-keeping, but she had since lost it. Competition developed for the estate when Matt's father, Samuel A. Rash, and one of his brothers, James L. Rash, appeared on the scene. Charley Crouse had physical possession of the estate, and the Rashes sided with the First National Bank to appoint Crouse as administrator of the estate. The case appeared headed for court when, on September 24, 1900, Ann withdrew her petition and settled for $250.00 cash-in-hand.
As an aftermath, Judge Voice refused to appoint Charley Crouse as administrator, and instead appointed Routt County Sheriff Charles W. Neiman to administer the Rash estate. However, Ann Bassett was not called "Queen of the Cattle Rustlers" for nothing - when Neiman took over, he found only 485 head of Matt's 600 head of cattle.
Site - 42 BASSETT RANCH
No family epitomized the essence of Brown's Park more than the Bassetts. In fact, no other family can claim as long an unbroken tenure of land in Northwestern Colorado, spanning more than 110 years. From the time Uncle Sam Bassett first set foot in Brown's Park in the autumn of 1852, down to the time his grandnephew, Emerson Bassett, last owned the ranch site at Joe's Spring in the late 1960's, the Bassetts have held land continuously. It is also proper to say that the Bassetts were the most prominent family in Brown's Park.
Sam and Herb Bassett, brothers, came from Herkimer County in the Mohawk Valley of central New York State. Sam, the eldest, left home to join the California a gold rush of 1849, but being none too successful as a prospector and being restless by nature, he wandered the West as a guide and scout. It was during these wanderings that Sam Bassett first visited Brown's Park.
The Bassetts were all poetic by nature, and Uncle Sam's first impression of Brown's Park, noted in his diary, is best expressed in his own words:
Brown's Hole, November, the month of Thanksgiving, 1852. Louie (Simmons) and I 'down in.' Packs off. Mules in lush cured meadow. Spanish Joe's trail for travel could not be likened to an up-state high lane for coach-and-four. Mountains to the right of us, mountains to the left of us, not in information but highly mineralized. To the South, a range in uncontested beauty of contour, its great stone mouth drinking a river (Lodore Canyon). Called on neighbors lest we jeopardize our social standing.
Chief Catump, and his tribe of Utes. Male and female created He them. Beads, bones, quills, and feathers of artistic design. Buckskins tanned in exquisite coloring of amazing hues, resembling velvets of finest texture. Bows and Arrows. 'Let there be no strife between me and thee!'
Two years later, Uncle Sam Bassett made another notation in his diary, which indicates that he had settled permanently:
Brown's Hole, June 22nd, 1854. Warren P. Parsons and his wife Annie have arrived, and our first white squaw, "Snapping Annie," is expertly driving her slick oxen 'Turk' and 'Lion.' 'Whoa! Haw, Turk! Gee, Lion!' commanded by a female bullwacker...Man's freedom in paradise is doomed.
Sam Bassett's original holding in Brown's Park was on the first bench above what came to be known as Hoy Meadows, his cabin commanding a magnificent view of the entrance to Lodore Canyon. Later he built a cabin on the west bank of Beaver Creek where that stream emerges from Cold Spring Mountain.
Herbert Bassett was born in Bridgewater, Herkimer County, New York, on July 31, 1839. After leaving college, he went to Illinois, where he was a schoolteacher until his enlistment in the Union Army in 1861. Mustered out at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in 1865, with the rank of major, he was appointed Collector of Revenue at the part of Norfolk, Virginia. Here he met and married Mary Elizabeth Crawford. They later moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Herb became Collector of Internal Revenue and Clerk of the District Court.
Little is known of Elizabeth Bassett, other than that she was born at Norfolk in 1855. Her parents both died when she was very small, and she and a sister, Hannah, were raised by their maternal grandparents, the Chamberlains. During their residency in Little Rock, Herb and Elizabeth became parents of two children, Josephine and Samuel.
Afflicted with asthma, Herb Bassett set out with his family to California, in the hope that his health would benefit from the change of climate. They stopped over in Rock Springs, Wyoming, to visit Uncle Sam, and it was he who persuaded Herb that the climate of Brown's Park would be more beneficial to his asthma than California. After a brief stint as clerk for the mercantile firm of A.C. Berkwith and Company, at Evanston, Wyoming, Herb took his family to Brown's Park in 1877.
Leaving the train at Rock Springs, Herb bought a team and wagon, and loaded up their possessions, which included a small organ and a considerable library. With his wife Elizabeth, and children - Josie, 4, and Sam, aged 2 - wedged between them, Herb headed south to Brown's Park, via Irish Canyon.
When at last Brown's Hole opened up before them, Elizabeth Bassett was so taken with the panorama, she asked Herb to stop the wagon.
"Herb," she said, breathlessly, "no place as lovely as this ever should have been called a 'hole.' It's more like a park. That's what it is - a tremendous park! And that's what people are going to call it - at least when they're around me!" And thus "Brown's Hole" became "Brown's Park."
Herb and his little family spent the first year with Uncle Sam Bassett in his cabin several miles north of Lodore Canyon. It had only one room, and was crowded; but soon, one more person was to be added. In this cabin, attended by the recently arrived Dr. John Parsons, on May 25, 1878, Elizabeth gave birth to her third child, a daughter, whom they christened "Anna."
The story of the birth of Ann Bassett is almost legendary in Brown's Park. Elizabeth did not have milk for the new baby. One of the curious bachelors gathered outside the cabin - an ex-buffalo hunter named Buffalo Jack Rife - came up with the solution.
A bank of Yampatika Utes were camped about 200 yards from Uncle Sam's cabin. Rife, who spoke fluent Ute, hurried away for a hasty powwow with Chief Marcisco and his medicine man, Muchekuegant Star. Within an hour of her birth, Anna - the first white child born in Northwestern Colorado - was handed over to the Indian medicine man, who carried her bareheaded, in Ute fashion, through a pouring rain to a Ute squaw, Seeabaka, who had given birth a few days previously.
Thereafter, every two hours, little Anna was taken from her mother to be nursed by her foster-mother, each time carried in the arms of the fascinated old medicine man. By the time Chief Marcisco's band broke their winter camp to follow a migrating game herd a hundred miles to the east, Asbury B. Conway arrived in the Park with a milk cow that had recently freshened, and presented it to the Bassetts.
With the assistance of neighbors, Herb Bassett erected a single-story five-room house of logs laid up in the form of a cross at Joe's Spring. Sheltered by the close hills on three sides, open only on the south, and protected by large trees next to the cold spring which flowed the year round, the cabin was ideally situated, and soon complimented by barns, sheds, corrals and a large bunkhouse.
Ann Bassett has left a description of the home:
There was a big cook stove, innumerable iron pots and brass kettles, feather beds, several 'spool' beds...All these shipped from Grandfather's Virginia plantation, hauled to the ranch in wagons...He (her father) became resolutely set against hauling any more 'boughten' house furnishings...Birch (aspen) grew in profusion along all the streams. Rawhide was plentiful. (Father) solved our problems by making small tables and chairs...using birth for the frames, and rawhide strips for seats and backs...Cushions were made of buckskin filled with milkweed floss.
The curtain problem was mother's to solve. She traded Indian Mary ten pounds of sugar for a bale of fringed buckskins. Father fashioned curtain rings from the leg bones of deer, and thus we made drapes for the windows.
Despite having the best-appointed home in the Park, the Bassetts were very poor during their first two or three years there, enhanced by Herb's strong conviction that it was wrong to steal other people's cattle. Their neighbors brought in milk, butter, eggs and other items of food to help out. The consensus among Brown's Park residents was that Herb Bassett was "too lazy to work," but more likely his lactitude was due to poor health and, formerly a clerk, a stranger to rough labor. There is evidence, too, that, although ineffectual at manual labor, he did accomplish much work.
Directed there by Buffalo Jack Rife, in 1879, Herb built a cabin in Zenobia Basin (named by Elizabeth), near the crest of Douglas Mountain, where he planned to summer his cattle. Ann Bassett wrote: "Father cut logs, dragged them to the site by saddle horse, and hewed timbers for door facings and floors for a three room cabin which still stands intact..." Later, it was Herb Bassett who, with his neighbor, Tom Davenport, pioneered the growing of grain in Brown's Park and brought in cradles and scythes with which to harvest it.
The Bassett Ranch, being on the eastern access route to and from Brown's Park, by which ninety-five percent of all travelers passed, became a favorite stopover, and no one was refused the Bassett hospitality. The Bassett home became the focal point around which most of the Park's social life revolved.
They were a musical family; Herb, who played the violin, as well as several other instruments, was especially gifted. Being also a deeply religious man, the early settlers of Brown's Park made it a practice to drop over to the Bassetts of a Sunday to gather round Herb at the organ and sing hymns.
The Bassett organ has been described as the most traveled musical instrument in the Rocky Mountains. Social gatherings being held at various ranches at various times, Herb would invariably load the organ onto his wagon and carry it there. For dances, John Jarvie, Sr. often coaxed tunes from the organ, drawing upon his repertoire of some one hundred numbers, played by ear. Thus the organ crossed the Park scores of times.
On June 3, 1889, the post office of "Lodore, Colorado" was established, with C.B. Sears named as postmaster. Mr. Sears failed to qualify, however, and, on January 8, 1890, A.H. (Herbert) Bassett received the appointment. Thereafter, the post office was kept in a side-room apart from the main Bassett living quarters.
Another attraction was the extensive Bassett library. According to Queen Ann Bassett: "The home contained good books such as Shakespeare's complete works, Shelley, Keats, Dickens, Byron, Longfellow, and many other works of poems, literature, and travel. My parents had brought books from their eastern home. Others were given us by Judge Conway. Bassett's ranch was a place for people to congregate, relax, and read..."
During the 1890's, one man who could frequently be found in Herb's library, chair kicked back, and feet propped up on a table, was the outlaw Butch Cassidy. Butch was a voracious reader, some of his favorite works being on Scottish history, Dickens, and medieval literature. Butch was a regular visitor at the Bassett Ranch, and a favorite of Herb Bassett; for a brief time, Cassidy "sparked" pretty Josie Bassett.
Elizabeth Bassett, dominant by nature, liked to run things, and easy-going Herb was content to let her do it. Her personal magnetism was such that she evoked an almost fanatical loyalty among most of the Brown's Park settlers, but especially among quite a number of unattached young men - homeless and outlawed young men - any one of whom it is said, "willingly would have died and gone to hell for her."
Matt Rash became her devoted follower, as did Isom Dart, Angus McDougal, Jim McKnight and others who constituted what became known as the "Bassett Gang." Elizabeth did not hesitate to sue them to her advantage, such as in the burning of the buildings at the Hoy ranch - the Hoys were her particular enemies.
Elizabeth Bassett was a well-bred Southern lady, who, though on a horse much of the time, always rode side-saddle. "Her outfit," wrote Queen Ann, "consisted of a beautifully fitted 'habit' or rich, dark blue material, long-skirted and draped with grace. For trimming, there were a number of gleaming brass buttons. She was a blonde...Mounted on her thoroughbred horse, 'Calky,' she was a picture to remember."
She was an ardent feminist and proselyted on behalf of the women's suffrage movement. Following the death of Dr. John Parsons in 1879, Elizabeth Bassett served the community as surgeon. Queen Ann again is our source:
One young man of our neighborhood was riding near a barbed wire fence and his horse ran into the wire, which cut the flush of the cowpuncher's leg to the bone. It was a deep, bad but. Mother was called as usual. She put five stitches into the flesh, with sewing or sack needles as used on horses and cattle, with common table salt as an antiseptic, and herbs gathered by the Indians to stop the flow of blood...The settlers were their own doctors after the death of Dr. Parsons.
But, in spite of her renown as a philanthropist, Elizabeth Bassett was more famous and best remembered as the organizer and leader of the Bassett Gang, and for her ability to out-ride and out-shoot most of the men of her time. When she began to organize her "boys" into a cohesive gang, Elizabeth's intentions were only the best: to reform and bring justice to a lawless region. However, leading impetuous young men who were no better than they should be, it was inevitable that Elizabeth should eventually cross over the fine lines of the law.
One such example occurred when she and her gang made off with 500 head of Flying VD cattle in a single raid. Cornered in Zenobia Basin on Douglas Mountain, Elizabeth Bassett and her gang "rim-rocked" the entire herd, i.e., drove them over the cliff into Lodore Canyon, thus destroying the evidence that might have been used against them.
On another occasion, a young fellow named Jack Rollas, who worked for the Bassetts, was killed by a Texan named Hambleton. Rollas had allegedly killed Hambleton's brother in Abilene, Kansas, and Hambleton had trailed him for two years before catching up to him on the Bassett Ranch. After the shooting, Hambleton and two companions were taken prisoner, and Elizabeth Bassett lined them up against the bunk house wall and placed a gun in the hands of the mortally wounded Rollas, urging him to kill all of the Texans - but Rollas was too weak to act upon the suggestion, and soon expired.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and others went to summon Justice of the Peace Charles Allen, and the prisoners were left under the guard of Herbert Bassett. Fearing there would be a multiple lynching, Herb told the three Texans that they "better go to the barn and feed your horses," then added that he trusted them to turn themselves in to the sheriff at Hahn's Peak, Colorado. Nothing was ever heard of Hambleton and his companions again, but rumor persists that Elizabeth and her gang caught up to them and dispensed "Brown's Park Justice." The grave of Jack Rollas can be seen at the old cemetery adjoining the Lodore School.
Elizabeth Bassett died of appendicitis on December 11, 1892, aged 37. She is buried in the private cemetery on the Bassett Ranch. Herbert Bassett died July 21, 1926 in an Old Soldier's Home in Illinois, and is buried in a military cemetery at Springfield, Illinois, aged 87.
The Bassett children carried on the traditions of their parents, but none moreso than Ann Bassett. Author John Rolfe Burroughs wrote: "Everything in her career points to the fact that, having come to think of herself as a very special person at an early age, throughout her life Ann Bassett never thought otherwise."
Josie Bassett was more the domestic type, inclined to stay in the house and work, while Ann Bassett was forever found at the bunkhouse, hanging around the cowboys. In later years she wrote:
Through trial and error I became a specialist at evading mother's staff of authority. With the speed of a wapiti I would race to the bunkhouse, that place of many attractions, where saddle-galled cowpunchers congregated to sing range ballads and squeak out doleful tunes on the fiddle. Somewhere in a secluded corner an absorbing round of poker was sure to be in session. One irresistible magnet of the bunkhouse was the black magic of forbidden reading..until a snoopy housekeeper yanked our invaluable Police Gazettes out of hiding...(and) used them to paper walls, and purposely pasted them upside down...We improvised a bucking contest. The cowboys were the horses, the young children the riders, and the hay corral the arena...Clean hay from the stack was spread on the ground...This show was conducted in the regular manner; horses and riders named, an announcer appointed, and purses awarded to the best riders...George Bassett, when only five years old, was the champion roper...
After her mother's death in 1892, Ann Bassett became unmanageable. She wrote: "About a year after Mother passed away...I began to be a problem to my father...Although wise in many ways, (he) was too tender and kind-hearted to control a girl of my temperament. I was about as responsive to (his) gentle rule of love...as granite on a winter morning..."
A family friend, Tim Kinney, who was an Irish Catholic, suggested to Herb that he should send his unruly daughter to St. Mary's of the Wasatch Catholic School for girls at Salt Lake City. Wrote Ann: "With a deep sense of obligation, I wanted to please those kind sisters, and did everything expected of me. Amazing as it now seems, I took home a medal for good conduct. But the cowboys swore I must have stolen it." Following St. Mary's, Ann attended a fashionable finishing school in the East, although her sister, Josie, once claimed that Ann hired Etta Place to take her place there, which seems in keeping with Ann's nature. Hers was always a split personality, fluctuating from genteel socialite to a hell-cat capable of out-cursing the roughest cowboys in fits of temper-tantrums.
Extremely beautiful and charming, Ann Bassett was always in demand among Brown's Park gentry. Her first serious romantic interest appears to have been the dashing outlaw Elzy Lay. When Lay drifted out of her life to follow the outlaw trail, she took up with the older Matt Rash, until he was killed by Tom Horn in 1900.
Following Rash's death, Ann Bassett felt she had a cause, and blamed cattleman Ora Haley, accusing him of hiring Tom Horn for the job. Her hatred of Haley was near maniacal. She began a vendetta against Haley's Two Bar outfit that lasted for years, and earned her the sobriquet, "Queen of the Cattle Rustlers."
"Queen" Ann later wrote: "No other stockmen were responsible for what I did. I turned the heat against myself by an open declaration of war...I rode out of the cedars at the Lew Heard Springs and signaled to a sour-dough brigade in charge of an army of Two Bar dogies en route to Douglas Mountain, and informed them what would happen if that herd proceeded farther West. It was not an idle threat. I had no support but a Winchester rifle with plenty of ammunition, and a place picked and fortified...That herd did not go west over the divide...but were turned (out) forty miles east (of Brown's Park)."
Ann had, in effect, appointed herself custodian of all the rangeland in Brown's Park. She frequently drove Two Bar cattle into the Green River, where they were swept away to destruction by the hundreds in the swift current of Lodore Canyon.
Eventually, making small headway against Ora Haley's outfit, Ann attempted a new strategy: on April 13, 1904, at Craig, Colorado, she married Hi Bernard, foreman of the Two Bar! She was 26 years of age; Bernard was 46. It was the first marriage for both of them.
After Hi Bernard's defection, the Two Bar wavered for several years under the direction of several transient foremen, until the advent of Bill Patton. Under his supervision, efforts increased to put an end to Ann's depredations on Haley's cattle.
On March 15, 1911, a weather-beaten man showed up at the Smelter Ranch leading a horse burdened with prospecting gear. He said his name was Nelson, and asked Ann if she could put him up at the ranch for a few days. She put him up in the bunkhouse, he dined at the family table, and went out each day to "prospect" on Douglas Mountain.
Nelson turned out to be a stock detective. He noted that when he arrived, the meat house at the ranch had been empty. Two days later it was full, and there were fresh wagon tracks leading up to the door. On the back porch of the ranch house, he found a pair of women's boots and overshoes smeared with blood. On March 18, Nelson reported his findings to Bill Patton at Two Bar headquarters on Snake River.
On the night of March 21, 1911, Bill Patton and two Two Bar cowboys, John Patton and Guy McNurlen, made a cold camp about two miles from the ranch, and next morning, after a search, found the head, hide, and offal of a freshly butchered heifer. The left ear of the animal showed the Two Bar mark - an underbit. On the right hip where the Two Bar brand had been, a piece was cut from the hide and was missing.
Ann Bassett and Tom Yarberry were immediately arrested. Her preliminary hearing, held in Craig, Colorado, was quite an event. Craig citizens pooled their money and rented the opera house so that all could attend and hear the evidence. The attorney for Ann Bassett and Tom Yarberry was Judge Z.Z. Carpenter and ended by change of venue before Judge Crowell, who fixed their bond at $1,000 each. The Craig Empire of April 1, 1911, stated:
Interest naturally centered in Mrs. Bernard, who is really a remarkable personage. Raised in the wilds of Northwestern Colorado, trained from childhood to ride and shoot, she has splendid education which has been improved by extensive travel. She is said to be as much as home at a swell social function as while taking her regular "watch" with the other cowpunchers on the roundup. As she appeared in court Thursday, stylishly attired, she looked the part of "Queen Ann" with her wealth of brown hair and stately carriage.
The People versus Ann Bassett Bernard and Thomas Yarberry came up for trial in August 1911, to packed crowds of spectators. By August 12, the jury could reach no agreement, and a new trial was set for February term, 1912. But when that date rolled around, it was unexplainedly postponed again until August. However, by August 1912, it was postponed again, because Ann Bassett was ill in Texas.
When the case finally came up for trial in August 1913, Ann Bassett had to face the music alone, for Tom Yarberry had skipped his $1,000 bond, and left his sureties, Ebb Bassett and J.J. Jones of Craig, holding the bag. Chick Bowen, who had been a telling witness at the first trial, was dead, having been murdered at Baggs, Wyoming. Two other witnesses, Matt Morelock and Bill Malone, left hastily "between days."
But Ora Haley took a severe beating at this second trial. Surrounded by many of his enemies in court, his presence was no match for that of the beautiful and seemingly demure Ann Bassett, who had the support and sympathy of the whole community, including most of the female population. To the masses, who deplored Haley's powerful tactics in more than this, Ann was a heroine.
Ann Bassett was acquitted. The town of Craig went wild. For the only time in its existence, the Craig Courier put out a special edition; there was a parade headed by the town band; a banquet was held at the Baker House Hotel; and afterwards everyone went to the movies. During the silent film, the projectionist flashed HURRAH FOR VICTORY! on the screen. After the movie they repaired to an all-night dance, where Queen Ann reigned over her adoring subjects.
In 1920, Queen Ann married a second time - having divorced Hi Bernard - to Frank Willis; she was 42, and Willis was 37. Willis had been born in Reeceville, Tennessee in 1883. In 1904 he went to work for the Two Bar outfit, where Patton offered him $500 if he would go to work for the Bassetts and spy on them to gather evidence of rustling; he had flatly refused.
Shortly after their marriage Ann and Frank moved to California where for ten years Willis worked in the oil fields; here, for a time, Ann was reunited with her one-time flame, Elzy Lay. In 1931, the Willis's moved to Arizona and ran a herd of 1,200 head of cattle on a ranch near Hackberry. Ann, always brilliant, enrolled in forestry at the University of Arizona, but dropped out when she learned women could not become rangers.
In 1937, Frank and Ann sold their Arizona ranch and moved to Colorado where Frank found employment with the Humphrey Gold Mining Company, and later as a sampler foreman for the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Eventually, the uranium boom found them in Leeds, Utah, where, in May, 1956, Ann Bassett died at the age of 78.
Frank Willis went back to Brown's Park, and lived in a little cabin on the Bassett Ranch. When he died some years later, he was buried just outside the fence of the Bassett family plot, by his own request before his death. He had had a personal feud with Ann's brother, Ebb Bassett, many years before, and stated that he did not want to buried in the same plot with "the s.o.b."
Ebb Bassett, sometimes known as the Bassett Kid, and his younger brother, George Bassett, were excellent cowboys, and sometime rustlers. Ebb Bassett eventually in 1927 he took his own life by coyote poison. George Bassett had been inside Isom Dart's cabin on Cold Springs Mountain that August day in 1900 when Tom Horn ambushed and killed the big black man; George went to Alaska for several years, to avoid the same fate.
Josephine "Josie" Bassett, who took the back-seat to the publicity of her notorious sister, Queen Ann, was equally as colorful. It has been noted that she was, at one time, the girlfriend of Butch Cassidy. Her first husband was Jim McKnight, one of the Bassett Gang, by whom she had several children, who were raised on the knee of Isom Dart, whom they adored.
Josie went through a succession of husbands, after driving McKnight away at the point of a gun. He has been described as "a brutal fellow with a vicious disposition," and, as "the biggest liar in three states." McKnight, like George Bassett, had received a threatening note from Tom Hicks (Tom Horn) to leave Brown's Park within 24 hours or "suffer the consequences."
Under the threat of two guns - one of them belonging to his wife - McKnight had gathered his cattle and was holding them near the Utah line. Half of them belonged to Josie, who got a court order in Colorado forbidding him to take them out of the jurisdiction. When Billy Harris, his former pal, a deputy sheriff, was trying to serve the writ, McKnight pushed the cattle across the river.
Josie sent her husband a note, telling him, in essence, that "all is forgiven, come home." McKnight fell for it. As he stepped through the door of their cabin on Beaver Creek that evening, Harris emerged from hiding and began reading the court order to him, while handing him a copy. McKnight ran out the door, with Harris following, reciting as much of the document as he could remember, and, when McKnight disappeared into the darkness, Harris fired several warning shots into the air.
Rushing through the brush, McKnight suddenly felt a blow between his shoulder blades and fell, certain that he was mortally wounded. Harris thought so too, although he hadn't intended to aim so low, and they carried him into the house and placed him on the bed. Aunty Thompson was sent for, but she could find only a red spot, with no sign of a bullet wound. Jim was well enough next day to sit up and play cards, but Billy Harris made him put up a bond to appear at the next term of court, where Josie got her share of the cattle and a divorce.
Josie had a little trouble keeping husbands - her full repertoire of names acquired thusly was Josephine Bassett McKnight Ranney Williams Wells Morris. She ran all but one off at the point of a gun. The last - Morris - was given five minutes to get off her property. As he departed, he bragged that he had three minutes left and would someday come back to use them up. "It takes less than a minute for a man to die," Josie told him.
Her fourth husband, Emerson "Mig" Wells, with two or three other men, left their Willow Creek Ranch (Tom Davenport Ranch) in Brown's Park to attend a New Year's Eve dance being held at Linwood, Utah, some forty miles to the west. When they arrived, the hotel-boarding house, kept by Minnie Ronholt (daughter of Charley Crouse of Brown's Park), was full, and they were put up in a small house belonging to Willard Schofield.
An item prepared for publication in the Green River (Wyo.) Star, dated, but never published, tells the story:
Green River, January 10, 1913. Information has been received from Linwood of the death of Emerson Wells, on the morning of January 1. He is said to have been on a drunk the day and night before and early the morning of the first his wife gave him a drink from a bottle of whiskey. In a very short time he was seized with convulsions and one followed the other until he died a little after eight o'clock. There were no available officers nor physicians near at the time and the body was conveyed to the Well's home on Willow Creek, near Brown's Park, without an inquest having been held. The burial took place January 7,, as nearly as can be learned. It is the opinion of those who saw Wells just before he died that he swallowed poison, perhaps strychnine, as his actions were similar to the actions of men who had been known to die of the effects of an overdose of that drug. It is possible that in a fit of remorse, rage, or discouragement, he committed suicide, but people who ought to know do not believe it. Mrs. Wells is said to have made the statement that her husband was subject to convulsions or fits...
The men folks were drinking a great deal during the day and Wells took on too much. When dance time came he was in bed and asleep. The others got ready to go to the dance hall and before leaving they covered the sleeping man up and left him. He didn't sleep very long and as soon as he awoke he got up and went over to the dance to fetch his wife back to the room. When they reached the little rooming house they are said to have had a fuss. She returned to the dance and he went back to bed. When the dance was over, sometime between one and three o'clock, Mrs. Wells returned to the room. Her husband, who was awake at the time, or soon afterward, called for a drink of whisky which she gave him according to information received. In a few hours he was dead. Whether he had taken a drink before or after has not been learned.
Wells was a familiar character in northeastern Utah. He resided on what is known as the Davenport Ranch on Willow Creek, which is now owned by August Kendall, president of the First National Bank, Rock Springs, Wyoming. A few months ago, Wells was arrested along with Peter Derrick, on the charge of removing marks from sheep. That case was dismissed by the Justice Court, and Wells was bound over to the District Court in the sum of $500. He was to have had his trial at the coming term. Mrs. Wells' maiden name was Bassett.
The snow was so deep that no outside authorities could be brought in, and Josie had the local constable, Justice of the Peace, Ed Tolten, "wrapped around her little finger." She then did a strange thing: she had Mig Wells' body taken outside where it was frozen stiff. Then Josie ordered the corpse loaded onto the wagon to be taken back to Brown's Park for burial. Karl Talley loaded the body onto the wagon, and Jose Bueno (known as "Joe Good"), one of her hired men, drove her back to Willow Creek.
Mig Wells was buried on January 7, in the little cemetery adjacent to the Lodore School. A few days later, however, a cowboy found the grave open and the coffin empty.
After Josie had left the boarding house at Linwood, Minnie began tidying up the room, and found a small vial of poison which she turned over to George Stephens, later sheriff of Daggett County, Utah. An inquiry was held, to which Josie was summoned to appear. She did, with a six-gun strapped to her waist and rifle in hand. This intimidating posture, coupled with the disappearance of the corpse, caused the inquiry to be prudently dropped.
Jodie ran a hotel in Baggs, Wyoming, for a time, then moved to Rock Springs, where she had a reunion with Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay. In 1919 she homesteaded a place several miles up the Green River from Jensen, Utah, a few miles east of Vernal. Not long afterward, she was arrested and tried on a charge of cattle rustling, reminiscent of that of her sister, Queen Ann, a few years before. She appeared in court dressed nattily, and, in her best manner, convinced the jury that she was simply incapable of the act. She was duly acquitted of the charge.
Josie Bassett lived the rest of her life alone in her little dirt-roofed, dirt-floored cabin at Jensen, where she died at the age of 87. She was buried in the family cemetery on the Bassett Ranch in Brown's Park.
Site - 19 BENNETT'S GRAVE
By the year 1898 the Bassett family had undergone some major changes. Elizabeth had died six years earlier and was buried on the hill above her log home. Matt Rash took over running the Bassett ranch, assisted by Jim McKnight and Isom Dart, since Herb Bassett cared little about it, spending most of his time in the cabin he had built for the Lodore Post Office, among his stacks of books. Armida "Auntie" Thompson took care of the cooking and housekeeping chores.
At twenty-four Josie was a beautiful girl with copper-colored hair and freckled complexion. She had married Jim McKnight shortly after her mother's death, when she found herself pregnant with his child. By 1898 they had two children, Crawford and Herbert "Chick." Uncle Sam Bassett had deeded his cabin and land on Beaver Creek to Josie for a wedding present, where she lived, taking care of her uncle until his death in 1904. By 1898 Ann Bassett was twenty years old and a beauty, with hazel eyes, freckles, and an abundance of cinnamon-colored hair and a rebellious disposition. The boys, Sam and George, were mostly easy-going like their father, but seventeen year-old Ebb, handsome, with thick black hair and gray eyes, was, like his sister Ann, somewhat of a rebel.
Valentine Hoy had started the Red Creek Ranch, just north of Brown's Park in Wyoming, in 1890, and in 1893 had signed a warranty deed on the place to his wife Julia. In the fall of 1897, the Hoys saw no profit from cattle sales and after paying bank loans could pay no other debts. Valentine Hoy could not pay a debt he owed to Patrick Louis Johnson, which so angered Johnson that he joined with "Judge" Jack Bennett in rustling Hoy cattle. Johnson had a bad reputation since 1892 when he killed a man in a bar fight.
John Bennett had served time in an Arkansas prison and had since been primarily employed in peddling liquor to the Indians. In April, 1897, Butch Cassidy had pulled off a spectacular robbery at Castle Gate, Utah, and the Wild Bunch gathered at Baggs, Wyoming, for a celebration. During the foray, "Old Man" Dick Bender became ill with pneumonia and died before a doctor could arrive. A kangaroo court was held in the Bull Dog Saloon to put the doctor on trial, and, Johnson and Bennett being in the bar, the Wild Bunch appointed Bennett as an "impartial" judge. The doctor was not harmed, and Bennett took the nickname "Judge" with him when he left Baggs.
Meanwhile, a prospector named Strang and his sixteen year old son, Willie, stopped at the Jarvie ferry one morning where Speck Welhouse was taking care of things. Strang, who had to make a trip to town, asked Speck if young Willie could stay with him for a few days and help out around the ferry. Speck always liked youngsters and was glad for the company.
All went well until Pat Johnson showed up, throwing loops with his rope, and before Speck was even aware of it, Willie was riding away with the cowboy to "go rope a few steers." When they arrived at the two-story Red Creek Ranch house, Willie was introduced to Charlie Teters, Bill Pigeon, and Judge Bennett, and the youth felt pretty important when he was invited to spend an evening in drinking, joking, and card-playing with the older men.
The next morning Johnson woke up with a hang-over, and was in a foul mood, but young Willie was still playful. When Johnson lifted a dipper of water to his mouth for a drink, Willie playfully bumped the bottom of the dipper, spilling water down the front of Johnson's shirt. At first Willie laughed at his joke, but when Johnson started after him, obviously angry,, the boy ran from the house, dashed down the steep hill, and ran toward the horse barn on the other side of the creek. Just as the boy stepped onto the footbridge, Johnson lifted his gun and fired. He may have only intended to scare the lad, but the bullet struck Willie in the spine, and he fell, face first, onto the bridge planks.
Valentine Hoy's in-laws, Mr. and Mrs. William Blair, who had spent the night in one of the upstairs bedrooms, hurried to help the men bring the wounded boy into the house. None of their efforts to save his life were to any effect, and he soon died.
Pat Johnson was remorseful, but at the same time he knew he stood no chance of explaining his actions to the law, and so rode away with Bennett on two of Hoy's best horses. Bill Blair left soon after to spread the news of what had taken place.
Johnson and Bennett rode directly to the Bender Gang's hideout at Powder Springs, a major stop-over point on the Outlaw Trail between Hole-in-the-Wall and Brown's Park. Here they joined two recent escapees from Utah State Prison, Harry Tracy and Dave Lant. Dave Lant, together with two companions, Charles Lovit (alias Charles Fergeson) and Bill Johnson (alias William Dalton), robbed the Cook Brothers General Mercantile store at Woodruff, Utah, on August 19, 1897. Lant had been sentenced to eight years in the Utah State Penitentiary, but on October 8, 1897, he and three other convicts escaped.
Dave Lant and Harry Tracy went to Vernal where they stole horses, and hid out for a time from Sheriff William Preece in a cellar on the Bob Atwood ranch,, then fled to the Walt McCoy sheep camp on Diamond Mountain. Both McCoy and Lant had once worked together for John Reader, who was a brother-in-law of Cleophas Dowd. McCoy gave them supplies, and they went on to Powder Springs, where they joined Johnson and Bennett. I was decided that Bennett should ride to Rock Springs for supplies, and meet the others later in Brown's Park near Lodore Canyon. From there, they planned to head south for Silvertip Spring at Robbers Roost. Coincidence became their undoing.
Valentine Hoy had earlier sworn out a warrant on Johnson and Bennett for rustling his livestock, and two Colorado lawmen, Sheriff Charles W. Neiman and Deputy Farnham, unaware of the Willie Strang murder or the presence of the prison escapees, entered Brown's Park to serve a warrant on the rustlers. What happened next is perhaps best related from an interview with Willie's brother, John Strang, in a 1932 edition of the Vernal Express:
It was in 1898 and hearing of the death of his brother Willie Strang, 16, shot by "Pat" P.L. Johnson, Mr. Strang, then 17, who was in Vernal, accompanied Sheriff Billy Preece and LeGrande Young (grandson of Brigham Young), deputy United States Marshal, to Brown's Park.
Leaving Vernal the trio went as far as the Bill Spack ranch on Brush Creek where they stayed for the night. The next day they made their way over Diamond Mountain in deep snow arriving at the Charley Crouse ranch, located about midway of Brown's Park, late in the evening only to find that Johnson had left the country on his way, it was thought, for Wyoming points. Evidently later Johnson had caught up with Dave Lant and Harry Tracy and headed for the desert country.
Mr. Strang states that Sheriff Preece and U.S. Deputy Marshal Young, not finding Johnson there returned to Vernal the next day for purposes not known to Strang, who stayed at the Crouse ranch. Crouse, so Mr. Strang relates, sent him to the Lodore post office to find out which way Johnson had taken or to see if he had secured any mail.
That evening Sheriff Charles Neihman of Routt County, Colorado came to Lodore and stated he was sure Johnson was on Douglas mountain with Lant and Tracy, or so he thought, for as he rode by and started towards them they had waved him back. He had attempted to find out who they were and what they were doing in that section. It is not known whether they recognized him as an officer or not.
Sheriff Neihman told Strang to notify all that he could to form a posse and they would ride the next morning to head off the bandits.
In the posse, so hastily secured, was Valentine Hoy, James McKnight, Joe Davenport, Boyd Vaughn, Bill Pidgeon, Ed Bassett, 17, a boy friend of Strang's, and Isham, a negro.
As they rode up to the outlaw's camp the posse surprised them as they were cooking breakfast, Mr. Strang says. They had camped in a ravine not far from Lodore canyon at the foot of Douglas mountain.
Whey they saw the posse they scattered to the shelter of the nearby rocks leaving the food, saddle horses, and camp outfit even their overshoes. All this and three pack animals were taken by the posse and sent to the Bassett ranch in charge of the negro Isham. Except for their firearms the outlaws were now at the mercy of the posse, who were determined to get Johnson, who had murdered young Strang.
All day they had attempted to get them to surrender, so Mr. Strang says, but being at a distance tending to the horses he could not distinguish their talk. As evening approached Hoy started into their stronghold and had beckoned for the group to close in. As he was close to them behind a rock Tracy it is thought, shot Hoy who fell shot through the heart, out of reach of his companions. Strang was bringing up the horses and was on lower ground near Hoy when he fell. They returned to the Bassett ranch for the night.
On the same day Valentine Hoy was killed, Ebb Bassett was gathering fresh horses for the posse and was on his way home with them when he spotted John Bennett. Bennett was in camp, awaiting the arrival of his friends, as planned, totally unaware that a posse was after them or that Valentine Hoy had been killed.
When Ebb Bassett reported Bennett's position to the men at the ranch, they formulated a plan. Bennett knew Ebb Bassett and considered him a friend, and so was not alarmed when the Kid rode into his camp that evening. Ebb told Bennett that there was nobody home at the ranch, so "Why don't you come on back to the house for the night and we'll play some cards." Bennett liked the idea of getting in out of the cold and readily accepted the offer.
When John Bennett stepped through the door of the Bassett house, he found himself looking down the barrels of half a dozen guns. He felt betrayed by a friend and, besides, that he had done nothing wrong. He cursed his captors as cowards, and this inflamed them. Herb Bassett tried to calm the men, but they rushed Bennett and grasped him, dragging him out of the door.
"Herb Bassett is the only white man in Brown's Park!" Bennett screamed.
In a short time, John Bennett was hanging from the end of a rope looped over the crosspiece of the ranch gate; the crosspiece was not high enough for a proper hanging, and Bennett strangled to death in a slow and sickening manner.
The lynch party returned to the Bassett house and put their heads together, agreeing to tell the lawmen that a masked group of men had come to the ranch and lynched Bennett.
Meanwhile, the posse trailed the fugitives to the G horse camp, where they had killed a colt to appease their hunger. Two days after the murder of Valentine Hoy, the posse caught up to the outlaws at Powder Springs.
Johnson was the first to give himself up, tossing his gun into the snow, threw his hands in the air, and begged his captors not to kill him. John Strang attempted to shoot him, but was restrained by members of the posse. Lant and Tracy gave themselves up after some negotiations.
Lant and Tracy were taken to Hahn's Peak jail in Colorado by Sheriff Neiman, where both later escaped. Sheriff Swanson of Sweetwater County, Wyoming, took Pat Johnson to Rock Springs, where he later stood trial for the murder of Willie Strang, and was found innocent. He served two years of a ten-year sentence for his part in Valentine Hoy's killing.
Perhaps the greatest effect the incident had was to unite the governors of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado in an all-out effort to break up the outlaw gangs who were over-running their three states. This effort finally broke up the Wild Bunch, and sent Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to seek refuge in South America.
When members of the posse arrived back at the Bassett ranch, they found Bennett hanging from the gate. Arriving a little later, Sheriff Neiman asked Deputy Farnham where Bennett was.
"Buried him," replied Farnham. "Didn't want to see him, did you?"
Ebb Bassett never forgot the part he played in the betrayal and death of his friend. It ate at him for the rest of his life. Years later he told a friend, "I see that man's face every night...every single night in my sleep."
John Bennett was buried in a shallow grave a few hundred yards northwest of the Bassett house. The crosspiece of the gate, from which Bennett was hanged, is preserved at the Jarvie place. Ironically, it was Bennett who constructed the stone house which still stands on the Jarvie place, having been hired by John Jarvie for the job in 1881.
Site - 20 IRISH CANYON
Early in the year 1875, three Irishmen, Mike Flynn, "the little Irish devil," an unnamed man, and a man named Hughes, robbed the store and saloon at Blairtown (Rock Springs, Wyo). Part of their loot was a couple of barrels of whiskey, which they loaded aboard a wagon and headed for Brown's Park. They drank up one of the barrels before they reached their destination.
Reaching the narrow canyon which Dr. Wislizenus called Brown's Hole, and through which Lieutenant Marcy had traveled on his relief expedition, they found that they were two drunk to negotiate the narrow passages with the wagon. They proceeded to bury one of the barrels and a trunk filled with miscellaneous stolen goods. They packed the remainder on the their mules and proceeded on down into the Park, where they camped with Judge Asbury B. Conway and Mexican Joe at Willow Creek.
The Sweetwater County, Wyoming sheriff arrived on the scene, having followed their trail. Although he was out of his jurisdiction, he proceeded to deputize Valentine Hoy, Uncle Sam Bassett, and George Spicer.
Mexican Joe had warned the robbers and they had fled, and the posse trailed them up Crouse Canyon to Diamond Mountain. The posse turned back only when they discovered that the outlaws had gone south down into Ashley Valley.
Near old Ashley Town, the three outlaws rounded up a hundred or more ranging cattle and drove them south, crossing the Green River on the ice several times, and then crossing the Duchesne River. Oregon Bill discovered the loss of the cattle and, with Joe Workman and Pardon Dodds, started in pursuit. They caught up with the outlaws and killed Hughes and one other; Flynn escaped. Since it was midwinter, the posse was sure Flynn would freeze to death, and returned to Ashley with the stolen cattle. Flynn managed to make his way through Nine Mile Canyon to Castle Gate, where he told an imaginative tale about his companions having been killed by Indians.
Thirty-four years later, in 1909, some cowboys, digging a roadway down the canyon, unearthed the cache of the Irishmen. The trunk was found to contain nothing of value, and the whiskey had leaked out of the barrel. Nothing was left except scattered staves. This exploit had, however, given Irish Canyon its name.
In 1915, Mike Flynn was shot and killed from ambush in Crouse Canyon, by Tom McCarty, Jr.
Site - 21 LODORE SCHOOL
By the fall of 1911 plans were finalized for a Brown's Park school. The Craig, Colorado Empire-Courier newspaper dated November 23, 1911, reported on the old school on Vermillion Creek, and on the progress of the new one being built on the bench facing Lodore Canyon.
The contract for construction of the school had been let to Mr. Jack Everts of the Superior Lumber Company of Rock Springs, Wyoming. Everts was assisted in the carpentry by Charley Hunt and Dan Hoover of Maybell, Colorado. The construction was completed on the 30' x 50' building by Christmas, and during the Christmas break, Miss Winnie Denny moved everything from Vermillion Creek to the new school house.
School sessions began in January 1912. Miss Winnie Denny taught, being paid $65 a month, until April 15, 1912. On May 25, 1912, Ebb Bassett was elected as President of the School Board for a term of two years; Frank Meyers was elected treasure for a term of three years.
Willa McClure, who was one of three sisters who were all teachers, was the teacher who began in 1912. Miss McClure was desperately in love with the handsome and dashing Ebb Bassett, but he was hardly the marrying kind. When Willa McClure began teaching, she discovered that she had only one pupil - 10 year old Jesse Taylor.
By Christmas 1912, Felix and Frank Meyers, brothers, built a cabin near the school in order for Frank's children, Fred and Julia Meyers, to more easily attend, bringing enrollment to three.
Willa McClure later married S.F. Ecckles and they homesteaded west of the Bassett Ranch. Her sister Ruby married George Bassett.
The first dance scheduled in the school for early sprig had to be canceled because of a smallpox epidemic. The first dance occurred in February of 1912, with Ab and Ada Hughes of Boone Meadows providing the music. Cowboys from the Two Bar Ranch attended, and the dashing bachelors Clarence Brown, James H. Templeton, and Ebb Bassett, kicked up their heels to the delight of tittering girls.
So many dances were held in the school from that time forth that the vibration began to move the building off its foundation, so that, in the 1920's, steel support rods were added to secure it.
A few of the teachers who taught in the school: Winnie Denny, Willa McClure, Lucy McClure, Debra Sharp, Miss Jones, Elmer Bradshaw. Miss Miller, Miss Florence Hartman, Wilbur Sullivan, and Mrs. Esther Campbell. Some of the families: Taylor, Miles, Meyers, Sterling, Vaughn, Wilson, Walker, Buffham, Hughes, Carr, Matthews, Bowen, Kemper, Burton, Roller, Fullmer, Gadds, and Grounds.
Tom Welch, a Henry's Fork cattleman who had spent his youthful years in Brown's Park, recounted an interesting story connected with the Lodore School. In 1924 (as Tom remembered the year; it may have instead been 1922), Butch Cassidy pulled up in front of Welch's home near Burnt Fork, Wyoming, in a Model T Ford, pulling a two-wheel trailer loaded with camping gear, accompanied by Elzy Lay.
The two old friends invited Tom to go with them on a trip to visit old friends and places they had known in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. At Rock Springs they visited with Bert Kraft,, who operated the South Pass Bar, and with Butch's old flame, Josie Bassett; Josie recalled that both Butch and Elzy were "packing too much weight."
At Brown's Park, they visited a few old acquaintances - some of them in their graves - and ended up at the Lodore School, which had not been erected the last time Butch was in the Park. He sat on the steps of the school and, wiping tears from his eyes with his handkerchief, as he looked away at the beautiful Gates of Lodore, he sighed: "God, what memories!"
On April 5, 1955, jurisdiction of the Lodore School was transferred from the school board to the Brown's Hole Demonstration Club, a women's organization. They continued to maintain the building as a public hall.
Lodore Hall was eventually placed under the protection of the National Register of Historic Places, on February 24, 1975.
Site - 22 LODORE CEMETERY
Adjacent to the Lodore School, on the east, is the Lodore Cemetery, containing many graves of considerable historic significance. A few that deserve mention are those of Jack Rollas, murdered on the Bassett ranch; John Jarvie, Sr. murdered at his store in the Utah end of Brown's Park in 1909, his body set adrift in the river on a skiff; Emerson Wells, husband of Josie Basset, who died mysteriously at Linwood, Utah, on New Year's Day, 1913 - his body may not be in the grave; Uncle Sam Bassett; and many more.
The cemetery is uniquely located, adjacent to the school, over-looking the Lower Hoy Meadows and majestic Lodore Canyon. Julie Blair Hoy, daughter of William Blair and wife of Valentine Hoy, killed by Harry Tracy in 1898, donated the land for the "Brown's Hole Cemetery."
Near the gates of the cemetery is a picturesque square-cut ledge of rock, containing original Indian petroglyphs, taken from the canyons north of the old Bassett place.
A walk through the cemetery at Lodore is a walk through the history of Brown's Park.
Site - 23 TWO BAR RANCH "GHOST TOWN"
The main headquarters of Ora Haley's Two Bar Ranch was on the Little Snake River, but near the turn of the century, the Two Bar established a horse ranch near the river a few miles west of Lodore Canyon. Before long it became the center of the big cattle outfit's Brown's Park operations, and most of the Brown's Park cowboys worked there at one time or another.
The ranch especially flourished under the management of William Grounds, and there came to be a virtual town erected there, with residences, a store, stables, corrals, blacksmith shop, saddlery, bunkhouses and numerous other out-buildings. After the decline of the Ora Haley outfit - brought about in great part by the rustling efforts of Queen Ann Bassett - the Two Bar fell into disrepair and neglect. In the 1920's many of the buildings were torn down for construction materials, but enough of the "town" still stands to make it a worthwhile tour through Brown's Park's historic past.
The old Two Bar "ghost town" stands about a mile west of the Lodore School.
Site - 24 HOY MEADOWS
The lush bottom lands of the Green River near the mouth of Lodore Canyon, in the extreme eastern (Colorado) end of Brown's Park, especially on the south bank of the Green River, were the most prime in the entire Park; they are generally referred to as the Hoy Meadows, or Hoy Bottoms.
In early times, these natural grasslands were the winter camp of the Ute Indians, and the trading ground of fur trappers who came there annually to trade for prime pelts. Among others who traded with the Indians here, from as early as 1826, were Uncle Jack Robinson (a cousin of Kit Carson), Louie Simmons (Kit Carson's son-in-law), and Jimmie Reed (who came from Kentucky with Kit Carson, and may have been a relative) - and, Kit Carson himself. In recent years, buttons, beads, needles, and other trade items have been found at this place, leading some to believe that it was the site of Fort Davy Crockett.
The Hoy brothers and their families settled here in the early 1870's, and dominated the grassy meadows which had formally been open and free range. From them, the meadows took their name.
For many years the Hoy Bottoms were the social gathering place for the settlers of Brown's Park, where horse races were held, baseball games, and other outdoor activities were conducted, as well as being the scene of several gunfights.
Site - 25 CASSIDY POINT
During the summer of 1896, outlaws converged upon Brown's Park in numbers never before seen or dreamed of. No sooner had he been released from prison on January 19,, 1896, than Butch Cassidy rode south to Brown's Park and looked up his old friends. Butch was anxious to organize the "Train Robbers Syndicate," and he called a meeting in Matt Warner's cabin on Diamond Mountain at which were some of the top men he had proposed as "lieutenants." Among these were Matt Warner, Elzy Lay, Henry "Bub" Meeks, Joe Walker and others.
Matt Warner's wife and daughter were then staying in the Parsons' cabin "down in" Brown's Park, and Warner was not anxious to return to the Outlaw Trail. Moreover, on May 7, 1896, Matt and his friend, Bill Wall, rode into a trap on Little Brush Creek and Warner killed two of his antagonists, Dick Staunton and Dave Milton, and was soon behind bars.
Cassidy put out the call to all of the gangs from Hole-in-the-Wall, Powder Springs, Robbers Roost, Blue Mountain and elsewhere, to congregate at Brown's Park on August 18, 1896, to discuss the organization of the "Train Robbers Syndicate." Gangs had already begun to move out for the rendezvous.
Five days prior to the scheduled meeting, on August 13, 1896, Butch Cassidy, Elzy Lay, and Bub Meeks robbed the bank at Montpelier, Idaho, to obtain funds to pay for a legal defense for Matt Warner. Then, they went to Brown's Park to keep their appointment.
Cassidy Point - obviously named in honor of Butch - is a large protruding precipice about a mile east of the Charley Crouse ranch on the Green River, in the west (Utah) end of Brown's Park. Beneath an out-cropped ledge at the top of the precipice, approachable only by a winding trail, Butch had constructed a cabin hideout. At the bottom of the point a large trench had been dug which was to be used in a last-ditch effort against a possible incursion by the law.
During the negotiations in the cabin on the point, Mrs. Crouse baked fresh bread and cinnamon rolls, which her 14 year-old daughter, Minnie, carried up the trail in a basket hooked over her arm, as a treat for the men. Crouse, who operated the Antler Saloon in Vernal, in partnership with Aaron Overholt, supplied whiskey to "wash the trail dust from their throats."
Here, at Cassidy Point, on August 18, 1896, the outlaw gangs met in conference, as well as holding horse races, gambling sessions and shooting matches. Brown's Park was an armed camp and the scene was one never to be forgotten by residents there. The valley was filled with more than 200 outlaws from various gangs of the West!
Here was the Blue Mountain and Robbers Roost gangs, duly represented by their several leaders, somewhat less notable than the Powder Springs Gang, led by notorious old Dick "Doc" Bender; and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, containing Harry Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid, but undisputably being operated by Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan. Flatnose George Curry, although admittedly present, had long since bowed to his younger and more daring namesake as the leader of the group.
Above them all stood Butch Cassidy, who proposed to organize all of these gangs - or at least the elite among them - into a swift and efficient unit, over which he proposed to become undisputed leader. It was an ambitious plan.
While the conference was underway, Cassidy stationed a man on the pinnacle of Swallow Canyon (south side) above the Green River, and another atop Table Rock in Jesse Ewing Canyon to the north. These lookouts were equipped with mirrors which would be used as signaling devices in case the law was bold enough to enter the Park during the conference.
Kid Curry had now arrived at a point in his career that he felt, by virtue of his experience, that he was the most qualified to rule over such an organization. Cassidy, however, quoted his most recent success at Montpelier, and asked Curry point-blank, "What have you done notable lately, outside of (robbing) one post office?"
Curry was an intelligent man. He was not insulted by the question, but he was offended.
"Listen," he said finally to Cassidy, "you have a bunch of good men on your side. The Powder Springs, Blue Mountain and Robbers Roost outfits all side with you. The Powder River, Little Rockies and Hole-in-the-Wall outfits all side with me. There is only one way we will ever settle this thing once and for all. I propose a contest!"
"You mean a gunfight?" Cassidy asked, squaring himself. One of the witnesses to this event, Albert "Speck" Welhouse, known among the outlaws as "The Speckled Nigger," related in later years:
I thought sure we was in a heap of trouble and shootin', 'cause the Kid was one mean man when he got riled up, but Butch weren't 'fraid o' no man, either, an' they jus' backed off and I thought sure this old body was gonna be right twixt the middle of it! Then the Kid, he sort of slacks off, you see, and he calms right down an' says he didn't mean nothin' by it 'cept he figgered t'only way to settle who was boss-man o' that outfit was fer a real contest to be had twixt the outlaws' to see who could rob the mos' banks and trains, don't you know.
"Now, there's an idea I like!" returned Butch, and they shook hands on it. "We will meet back here exactly one year from today, right in the same place. The gang that has pulled the most spectacular robberies during the year - and gets caught the least - will take charge of the Train Robbers Syndicate."
At the meeting on Cassidy Point, four young hangers-on had requested to become part of the gang, but they had been turned down by both Cassidy and Curry as being too inexperienced. They stamped out and determined that they would prove to the others how experienced they could be.
They were George Law, alias George Bain, just nineteen, a nephew of Joe Tolliver and Charley Crouse; Joe Rolls; George Harris; and Jim Shirley, none of whom were past twenty years of age. They chose as their target the bank at Meeker, Colorado, some 75 miles southeast of Brown's Park. They arrived in the vicinity on the morning of October 13, 1896, and, Cassidy-style, left Rolls outside of town with a fresh relay of horses. The other three then attempted to rob the bank which, through an adjoining door, was connected to a mercantile. From that point on, their inexperience showed itself. They fired two shots within the bank to show that they meant business, which in turn brought half the town down on them instantly.
Thoroughly surrounded, they put up a ferocious battle, more than 100 shots having been fired and four of the townspeople were injured, but Law and Shirley were killed out-right and Harris lived only several hours. When they failed to return, Joe Rolls rode hell-bent back to Brown's Park and left the relay horses tied to the trees where they were not found for nearly a week, nearly starved to death. Such ended the career of what came to be known as the "Junior Wild Bunch" - ended abruptly before it began.
On June 28, 1897, two months before the "contest" ended, Kid Curry and several of his cohorts, including the Sundance Kid, botched up an attempt to rob the bank at Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Cassidy, however, with the help of Elzy Lay, Joe Walker and others, successfully staged a spectacular hold-up of the payroll at Castle Gate, Utah, on April 21, 1897, earning the undisputed right to lead the Train Robbers Syndicate - to become more famous in the annals of the Western History as the "Wild Bunch."
The following year - 1897 - as planned, the outlaws met once more at Cassidy Point in Brown's Park to finalize plans for their criminal organization, after which they rode down en masse upon the little towns of Dixon and Baggs, Wyoming, where they staged a wild celebration. Wearing out their welcome at Dixon, they rode on to Baggs.
It was at Baggs that Cassidy put up $500 as down-payment for his young friend, a former Vernalite named Tom Vernon, to buy a hotel, and bought new Levi jeans for every boy in town. One of the impetuous young outlaws made the mistake of trying to take on the old trapper, Jim Baker, an octogenarian, who ran the young hellion out of town with a tomahawk. At Jack Ryan's Bull Dog Saloon, the outlaws paid a silver dollar for every bullet hole they put in the bar.
It was this wild celebration, following the installation of Butch Cassidy as leader of the Train Robbers Syndicate at Cassidy Point, that gave the new outlaw gang the sobriquet, "The Wild Bunch."
Site - 26 CROUSE RANCH
Charles Crouse was born near Richmond, Virginia, on November 9, 1851, the son of Charles and Sarah Crouse. His father died when he was a small boy, and his mother married a man named J. Frank Tolliver, a Carolinian, bearing him two sons, Joseph and Columbus. Tolliver was such a hard man that Charley ran away from home at the age of nine, and never returned.
For several years he wandered from place to place, doing whatever was necessary to survive, and at the age of 14, bought another man's place in the draft for sixteen dollars, and was inducted into the Union Army.
The end of the Civil War found Private Charles Crouse serving as orderly to a Major Crouse (no relation) on the Little Bighorn in Dacotah Territory. While whittling out a brake block for the Major's buckboard one day, Charley missed a lick with a hatchet and cut off his left thumb. Major Crouse formed an attachment to the boy and wanted to adopt him, but Charley adamantly refused, considering himself a man.
Leaving the Little Bighorn, Crouse became a bullwacker on the Laramie Plains, and then freighted supplies for the construction work on the Union Pacific Railroad. He eventually drifted into Green River City, Wyoming, where he became acquainted with William G. "Billy Buck" Tittsworth and Aaron G. Overholt, a livery owner.
Tittsworth had made a good thing of hauling cordwood to fire the boilers of Union Pacific locomotives, until the discovery of coal at Carbon, Wyoming, and at Rock Springs. Tittsworth, an Arkansan, decided to go into the range cattle business. In 1874, Tittsworth and his partner, a young Welshman named "Griff" Edwards, and purchased several hundred head of cattle in Oregon, which they turned out on Salt Wells Creek, mid-way between Rock Springs and Brown's Park. Falling out with Edwards, Tittsworth took on a new partner, a cockney blacksmith from Rock Springs named Greenhall. In 1876, they ran their cattle briefly in Brown's Park, until the Hoys crowded them out. Back at "Tittsworth Gap" in Salt Wells Basin, Billy Buck was soon joined by Aaron Overholt, Charley Powers, and Charley Crouse.
Among the Mormon converts en route to Utah in 1868 was George Law, from Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife and eight children. Reaching Rock Springs, and being on experienced coal miner, Law saw an opportunity to open up a coal mine, and built a "dug-out" for his family in the dirt escarpment above Bitter Creek.
Law's 14 year-old daughter, Jean, began seeing the older Tittsworth against her parent's wishes, and when the Laws moved to Paradise, in Utah's Cache Valley, they grudgingly consented to allow Joan to marry her beau. She moved on the Salt Wells ranch and cooked and cleaned for the bachelors.
When George Law settled in Utah, he discovered that certain middle-aged and elderly Mormon polygamists were eyeing his nubile young daughters, and he sent Mary and Elizabeth to their sister at the Tittsworth Gap ranch for a protracted visit. It comes as no surprise that, within a year of their arrival, both of the Law girls were married.
Brown's Park - 64
Elizabeth Law married Charles Allen, who became a Justice of the Peace in Brown's Park, and, on May 1, 1879, Mary Law, aged 17, became the wife of 28 year-old Charles Crouse. Crouse, by this time, had a cabin on a squatter's claim in Warren's Draw near the head of Pot Creek on Diamond Mountain. The cabin, where they set up house-keeping, had only a buffalo robe spread over a quaker-pole bunk for a bed, a Dutch oven, a few pots and pans, and a dog.
Not long after his marriage, Charles Crouse had business to transact in Pinedale, Wyoming, and took leave of his young bride, telling her he would return to five days. Through reverses in fortune, he was away much longer than expected, and his young wife suffered great apprehension for his safety,, and for her own.
Farther down Pot Creek an old trapper named Daniel Boone, a grandson of the famous Daniel Boone, had a camp. This kindly old mountain man, after whom a considerable drainage lying east of Brown's Park is named, began visiting the isolated young woman daily, reassuring her, and bringing her gifts of trout, rabbit, and sage hens.
One afternoon while Boone was visiting, Mary Crouse tried to pick up his muzzle-loader, but was amazed to discover that it was so heavy she could barely lift it. With a grin, Boone unscrewed the gun's butt-plate, and revealed a hoard of twenty-dollar gold pieces - his life's savings - nestled in the stock.
Crouse, meanwhile, had bought a small herd of saddle horses in Pinedale and was driving them south towards Brown's Park when he was captured by a band of young Arapaho braves. Angered because of a recent broken treaty, the warriors tied Crouse to a tree and piled pine-knots at his feet, setting them on fire.
By chance, there was an older Indian among the band for whom Crouse had performed some service during his days on the Laramie Plain, who came forward and spoke eloquently in his behalf, thus saving his life. His horse herd was his ransom, and he was placed on an old crow-bait more and told to make tracks.
Crouse was wise enough to know that the young braves would pursue him once he was out of sight of the camp, so he abandoned the horse and eluded his pursuers on foot for several weeks. Afoot and unarmed, he holed up during the day, traveling by night, living off unripened berries. On the seventeenth day after leaving home, half-starved and weary, he stumbled into his cabin on Diamond Mountain to the great relief of his waiting young bride.
While Crouse was living on Pot Creek on Diamond Mountain, Brown's Park was filling up with settlers - between 1876 and 1880 there came C.B. Sears, Ed H. Rife, James Warren, Herbert Bassett, G.W. "Griff" Edwards and his brother J.G. "Jack" Edwards, George, James, and Walter Scribner, Tom Davenport, Tommy Dowdle, Cleophas
Brown's Park - 65
J. Dowd, Frank Goodman, Harry Hindle, John Jarvie, Dr. John Parsons, Aaron Overholt, the Hoy brothers, and Mary Crouse's brother, George Law, among others.
On of the more interesting of these was a squawman named Jimmie Reed, a relative of Kit Carson who came West as a boy from Kentucky with Carson, and helped establish a fort in the Uintah Basin near the confluence of the Uintah and White Rivers as early as 1836. He had been one of the residents of old Fort Davy Crockett.
In 1876, Jimmie Reed and his Shoshone wife Margaret built a cabin on the south side of Green River at the mouth of a creek which came to be known as Jimmie Reed Creek, and, later, as Crouse Creek. Reed's son, James, Jr., stated:
My father was the first man to trade iron to the Utes; traded butcher knives, needles, guns. The Indians used to pile beaver pelts as tall as a gun to get it. That's why they made the (barrels of) old guns so long. It was to get more beaver...
In 1879, the Ute Indians of Colorado went on the warpath, and massacred whites at White River Agency, and, shortly thereafter, the detachment of cavalry from Fort Steele, Wyoming, under the command of Major Thomas T. Thornburg, sent to quell the uprising. As a result, some twelve or fifteen people spent the winter of 1879-80 forted up with the Tittsworths - including Charles and Mary Crouse.
When the Indian troubles subsided in the spring of 1880. Crouse decided not to return to his claim on Diamond Mountain, but instead paid $600 to Jimmie Reed for his squatter's claim on Green River in Brown's Park. Soon, both the creek and the canyon from which it emerged came to be known as "Crouse Creek" and "Crouse Canyon."
Because it was an important link in the Outlaw Trail, the Crouse ranch, and Crouse Canyon, became favorite hideouts of such outlaws as Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Kid Curry, Matt Warner, Elzy Lay, and others.
Emerging from the canyon, Crouse Creek tumbles across a boulder-strewn bench several hundred yards wide, then falls away to the Green River between willow thickets. The original Crouse ranch included this bench as well ass the grassy bottomland on the south bank of the river. Here, Charley Crouse bred and raised his fine horses, always more interested in racing than rustling.
Brown's Park - 66
Crouse was innately aggressive by nature. A man of powerful physique, he was mean normally, and even meaner when drunk - which was a good part of the time. So dangerous a man was he, in fact, that even the pushy Hoys, who labored to exercise hegemony over Brown's Park, made no effort to trifle with Charley Crouse.
The only way to approach the Crouse Ranch from Brown's Park proper, was to cross the Green River. During the 1880's and 1890's, a black man named Albert "Speck" Welhouse, operated a flatboat ferry across the Green River near the Crouse Ranch at Parson's Ford. Welhouse, a former slave, had had an exciting life. Coming West after the Civil War, he had been cook in the "Castle" of English cattle baron, Moreton Frewen, near Hole-in-the-Wall in Wyoming. Later, he drove stagecoach between Deadwood, South Dakota and Yellowstone, until he was robbed at gunpoint by the notorious Jesse James. He had been in jail at Deadwood when, in 1897, the Sundance Kid and his cohorts had made a daring escape, and he rode a distance with Longabaugh on the back of a stolen workhorse to elude a posse in pursuit.
When Charley Crouse established his ranch on the south bank of the river, his wife filed on 160 acres at the mouth of Beaver Creek on the other side of the Green River, where the Cassidy Racecourse was later built.
Meanwhile, Crouse's brother-in-law, Billy Buck Tittsworth, had found himself in a spot of trouble, and had left the country "between days." The problem resulted from a dispute with Tittsworth's one-time associate, Charley Powers, a close friend of "Blackjack" Tom Ketchum, prominent member of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. Powers, leaving the Tittsworth ranch in a huff, threatened to squeal on his old gang for their rustling activities.
Tittsworth set out after Powers and caught up to him at his cabin, a fence being between them. Powers started to climb the with his knife in hand, threatening to kill Tittsworth, when the latter shot him in the side with a shotgun, which turned him around, the second barrel killed Powers instantly.
Although Tittsworth claimed he had killed Charley Powers in self-defence, Ketchum went gunning for him, and Billy Buck hurriedly left the region. Financed by Crouse, Tittsworth and his partner Greenhall started a hog farm near Avoca, Iowa.
Whoever buried Charley Powers didn't make a good job of it. He was buried without a casket in a shallow grave in sandy soil which, in a year or two's time, washed away,, exposing Power's skull. A passer-by perched the skull on a pole stuck in the ground, and, as other bones became exposed, they were wired to the pole, until the entire skeleton hung there like a gruesome scarecrow, a landmark for many years thereafter.
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Although Crouse maintained his headquarters in Brown's Park, he had many interests elsewhere. He and his partner, Aaron Overholt, bought a ranch near Kearney, Nebraska, in order to facilitate the sale of their horses and mules. In 1890, Crouse and Overholt bought the Antler Saloon in Vernal, which became a favorite hangout of Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, and, when
Crouse sold his holdings on Crouse Creek to the Park Land & Livestock Company, he merely moved across the river to Bridgeport, near Parson's Ford, where he operated another saloon, catering mostly to the outlaws. Cassidy stayed several times in Crouse's storage cellar at Bridgeport to escape the notice of the law.
Three children were born to Charles and Mary Crouse: Minnie, Clarence, and Stanley. Minnie, who died not many years ago in her late nineties, was born in 1882. One of the Crouse boys had red hair, and the other black. It was typical of Charley Crouse that he habitually referred to them as "that red-haired son-of-a-bitch and that black-haired bastard."
Crouse had a stock-farm on Ashley Creek near Vernal, and a butcher shop in Rock Springs, Wyoming. He had owned the butcher shop since the early 1880's, allegedly to market rustled Brown's Park beef. In 1885-86, young Robert Leroy Parker, alias George Cassidy, worked for Crouse as a part-time butcher, earning for himself the most famous sobriquet among western outlaws - "Butch" Cassidy.
Around 1890, Crouse shipped his daughter Minnie off to Iowa to go to school,, staying with her aunt Jean Tittsworth. Later, Clarence and Stanley joined her there. The Crouse boys, inspired by outlaw associations, became quite wild and irascible, and often fought with their father. Stanley Crouse died in 1960, and Clarence got into trouble and went to the Wind River Reservation near Fort Washakie, Wyoming. After an argument with his family in about 1940, he disappeared, and was never heard from again.
Crouse's brother-in-law, Charley Allen, being a little strait-laced, left Brown's Park and took his family back East to be educated in "proper" society. His son Jack became discontent and returned to Brown's Park where he worked for Charley Sears. After his father died, he was joined by his mother and sister Bess. They took up a claim on the Green River above Linwood, some 35 miles west of Brown's Park.
When Marius N. Larsen and Keith Smith each started a hotel of sorts at Linwood, Bess and her mother took charge of one, and Minnie Crouse, her cousin, ran the other. Nearby was Bob Swift's famous "Bucket O' Blood" Saloon, right on the Wyoming-Utah line - a favorite watering-hole for the Wild Bunch. Larsen had a carpenter named Knud Ronholt build an octagonal dancehall next to the saloon; eventually, Minnie Crouse became the wife of Ronholt, and later of George Rasmussen, a clerk in the Smith & Larsen Mercantile.
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On one occasion, Clarence and Stanley Crouse got roaring drunk and rode into Linwood stark naked. They spied old Pete Miller, then working as blacksmith for Larsen, but who was sometimes deputy sheriff and craps dealer at Swift's gaming tables, and commenced to rope him and drag him around the town. Mark Anson grasped the rope, while Willard Schofield cut it with his pocket-knife, and Pete Miller ran inside and grabbed up his rifle, putting a run to his antagonists with a few close shots.
Charley Crouse knew both good and lean times. His blooded horses and mules, sold from Kearney, Nebraska, to procurement officers for most of the armies of Europe, brought sufficient money for him to take his long-suffering wife on a vacation to Long Beach, California. Mary Crouse, whom Ann Bassett called "...the salt of the earth, a gracious and beautiful woman," died in 1902.
Charley Crouse was never a member of the Wild Bunch, at least to the point where he participated in bank and train robberies, but he associated with them, harbored them, and shared in their profits. J.S. Hoy perhaps described him best:
Crouse was a natural born diplomat, dexterous in securing advantage and gaining his ends. Instead of damning law and lawyers, judges, courts, constables, sheriffs, bankers, and assessors, in public he spoke well of them. Instead of waiting for any of them to come and see him, he went to see them - brought them the news, expressed sorrow that men (in Brown's Park) should so far forget themselves as to violate the law...(thus) he succeeded in convincing his listeners that he was what he was not.
However, Charley Crouse was, most of all, a dangerous man, and had killed a number of men. He seldom gave them any advantage. He killed a man named Travis in a dispute over a debt. Says Hoy:
Crouse's version of the affair was that, after a wordy quarrel, Travis shot at him, missed, but killed Crouse's horse. Whereupon Crouse mad a breastwork of the dead horse from which he shot Travis. A young fellow known as "Buckskin Ed" (Edward Rowley) was the only witness to this affair...A prominent cattleman, when he heard of the (Travis) killing, said "that is a hell of a way to pay a man what you owe him! Crouse owes me $400, but as I don't want to be killed, I will continue to let him owe me."
J.S. Hoy admitted that he was placed in the same predicament by Crouse on several occasions. Buckskin Ed Rowley, who witnessed the Travis killing, shortly thereafter disappeared, having last been seen leaving the Crouse Ranch and riding up Crouse Canyon. Several other people disappeared in the vicinity of Crouse Canyon, making the locality suspect: James Peterson, "Scotchman Jimmie" Lindsay, and an eighteen year-old boy named Caldwell from Vernal, with whose father Crouse had an altercation over a horse race.
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In the latter instance, William Coleman Boren, who ranged cattle on Diamond Mountain, witnessed the shooting and rode up as Crouse was examining his handy work. Crouse was irate at having been seen, and warned Boren to "move on and mind your own goddam business." Boren, in turn, cautioned Crouse that he had better report the incident to Sheriff Pope at Vernal, and rode on.
Later, learning that Crouse had never reported the incident, Boren confronted him about it. Crouse, taking a threatening posture, warned Boren that there was no evidence and that he would take it highly personal if anyone connected his name to such insinuations. Sheriff Pope conducted a search, but was unable to find a body or other evidence. For some years thereafter, Crouse and Boren avoided each other warily.
Perhaps a better illustration of Crouse's unpredictable nature is when he was returning home one day in his wagon after conducting some business on the north side of the river. He had imbibed a little too freely, and had several bottles of whiskey with him, when he picked up Speck Welhouse along the road. He shared the contents of the jugs with Speck, and they continued on the way, drinking and singing, until the Negro, too, was intoxicated.
Having forded the Green River safely, they arrived at the river bottoms below the Crouse ranch buildings, unhitched the horses, and turned them out to graze. Then, Hoy again tells what happened:
Both feeling their oats, or whiskey, were anxious to test their strength, beginning playfully...sparring and tapping each other on the nose and about the head, then clinching, each being afraid of the other, there commenced a real struggle for mastery. Albert proving the better of the two, threw Crouse and while he was on top, Crouse managed to draw his pocket knife and stabbed Albert in the groin, inflicting a dangerous if not fatal wound. The stab caused the Negro to relax his hold.
Crouse told me that when he disengaged himself from his adversary, the latter picked up a ten pound stone and was in the act of hurling it at him when he drew his knife and stabbed the Negro (again) in self-defense.
Crouse realized the seriousness of Albert's wound, was sobered at once. Not being able to pull the buckboard alone with Albert in it, he went to his house and got his wife to help him; the two succeeded in getting the wounded man to the house and then Crouse went for help, and removed Albert to his home at the Davenport ranch on Willow Creek. For several days it was thought he would die. Crouse was indefatigable in his attentions, nursing and caring for his victim...He knew that if the man died, at the very best he would be called to
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account, which would necessitate his appealing to a "criminal attorney" to get him out of the scrape, and that would cost him another $5,000 or more 0 as much as he had to pay to save Joe Tolliver, his half-brother...(following the death of Charley Seger).
Most of Hoy's Account came from Crouse himself. Albert Welhouse, however, related a much different version in his old age, when he lived with Frank Swain at Vernal. According to Speck, they had unhitched the wagon on the north side of the river, and that was where the horse-play took place. He beat Crouse in the wrestling match, after which Crouse became morose and sullen.
Crouse then hopped aboard one of the horses and started to ford the river. He invited Speck to jump up in front, and just before they reached the other side, Crouse pulled his pocket knife and reached around in front of Speck, eviscerating him, then dumped him into the water.
Speck claimed that he made it to shore by himself, holding his intestines in his hands. He credited Mary Crouse with saving his life, dragging him single-handedly to the house, pushing his intestines back inside, and sewing him up with a sack needle, using whiskey as an antiseptic. Whichever account is correct - and one is more inclined to believe Speck's version - the Negro survived the assault and lived to a ripe old age.
In the late 1890's Charley Crouse decided that enough people and wagons were passing by his place that it would be a good investment to build a bridge. He hired LeGrand Young to construct one for ten thousand dollars. Within two years, however, a heavy spring flood and ice jam swept it away. The place came to be known as Bridgeport.
Charley eventually sold out his holdings in Brown's Park, and with his daughter, Minnie, took up a claim at Grindstone Springs north of present Dutch John, and east of Linwood, Utah. While driving a team from the Park to Rock Springs in 1906, Charley was suddenly taken seriously ill. The Sweeneys took him in and sent for a doctor, but he died before the doctor arrived. Charley Crouse was only fifty-five. The cause of death was attributed to a life of hard-drinking.
Site - 27 SEGER'S GRAVE
Charley Crouse wanted nothing to do with the Tollivers, but sometime in the eighties Mary Crouse felt the need to write to Charley's mother and let her know her son was still alive. As a result, the whole Tolliver clan descended on them.
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Charley installed Frank and Sarah in Uncle Sam Bassett's old cabin at the mouth of Beaver Creek Canyon. Columbus "Lum" Tolliver had a cabin on Sears Creek for a time and later homesteaded near the Hoys. Joe Tolliver filed on the rights to Spitzie's Spring.
If Charley Crouse was one of the meanest men in Brown's Park, then his half-brother, Joe Tolliver, was no better. Tolliver was the self-proclaimed wrestling champion of Brown's Park. Matt Warner once related that the toughest hand-to-hand fight he had ever had in his life was with Joe Tolliver over a woman. It ended in a draw, with both contestants so badly battered and so utterly exhausted that they literally could not raise their fists to strike another blow.
Cleophas Dowd, who was wrestling champion at the University of San Francisco as a young man, was said to have been the only man ever to have defeated Tolliver. Most people with any sense at all, simply avoided the challenge.
At a Christmas celebration held in the Crouse cabin in December 1891, Tolliver issued a challenge to anyone present to beat him in a contest. Charley Seger, a recent arrival in Brown's Park who was unaware of Tolliver's reputation, took up the challenge and, surprisingly, soon had the "champion" pinned to the floor. This so infuriated Tolliver that he drew his knife and commenced to carve Seger up seriously. Mary Crouse and Josie Bassett tended to Seger's wounds, but by the following morning, he was dead.
The ground was frozen so solid, efforts to dig a grave proved futile, so the men had to use their ingenuity. The result was one of the most unique graves ever devised in the American West.
Flat slabs of red sandstone were piled, like bricks, to form an almost square enclosure, into the bottom of which, sans casket, Seger's body was placed. Dry, loose sand was gathered from beneath overhanging ledges on the southern escarpment of Swallow Canyon and tossed into the enclosure to cover the body. A polished granite headstone was eventually erected, which bore the following inscription:
To the
Memory of
Charles W. Seger
Born: Jan. 20, 1867
Died: Dec. 27, 1891
The story does not end there, however. Charley Crouse paid a criminal attorney $5,000 to get his half-brother "off the hook." This rankled Crouse considerably, for he knew Tolliver would never pay him back.
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Therefore, when young Albert Seger, Charley's brother, arrived in the Park from Salt Lake, trying to stir up further investigation, like so many other visitors to the Crouse ranch, he suddenly disappeared. In fact, he was stabbed to death by Crouse, and secretly interred in the same grave with his brother!
Site - 28 FLYNN POINT
Michael Flynn was a fiery red-haired Irishman, known locally around Brown's Park fittingly as, "the little Irish devil." Flynn's first appearance in the Park, of any note, was in 1875 when he and two other Irishmen robbed a store and saloon in Blairtown (Rock Springs), Wyoming. They buried part of their ill-gotten gains in the canyon since known as Irish Canyon, in honor of their visit (See site 15 - Irish Canyon)
After a colorful career as an outlaw and vagabond, Flynn finally more-or-less settled down on Brush Creek on Diamond Mountain, and later had a cabin at Bridgeport, in Brown's Park. He married another red headed Irish woman, Mercy Green, and they sired two red-headed sons, Timothy and Riley. Tim Flynn was distinguished by his long hair, which he braided in a pig-tail, and hung down his back. Charley Green was yet another red-headed Irishman, a cousin of Flynn's wife, Mercy Green; his hair, in the back, always stood straight out, in a permanent cow-lick, making him the object of some derision.
Charley Green was witness to an altercation between Mike Flynn and the Burton boys one day, when Flynn and his family left Brown's Park in a spring-seated wagon for their spread at Brush Creek, on Diamond Mountain. Charley Green, who was doing some moonshining in Little Hole, fell in with the Flynn's wagon up Crouse Canyon.
Mercy was seated on her husband's left, and the two boys rode in the back. Flynn's Winchester was propped upright in the wagon box between the seat and the brake. The Burton boys rode over the ridge from Greendale (formerly the Cleophas Dowd-Lewis Allen ranch), on the fight because Flynn had stolen some of their horses. They rode up to the Flynn wagon, pistols drawn.
"Mike Flynn," one of the Burton boys spouted, "We're gonna kill you, you thieving son-of-a-bitch!" Mike Flynn said nothing, but sat there grinning, apparently unaffected. However, his movements hidden beneath the dashboard of the wagon, Flynn worked his toe under the stock of his rifle. Then, suddenly tossing the reins to Mercy, Flynn kicked the wagon brake with his right foot, then jerked his rifle towards him, literally kicking it into his hands.
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As Mercy slapped the reins, causing the team to leap forward, Flynn rolled over backward into the back of the wagon, shooting twice as he did so. The Burtons headed for cover, and Charley Green headed for home, laughing all the way.
That incident had occurred in about 1900. Two years later, Joe Tolliver came upon Mike Flynn in his buckboard at Bridgeport, and the scene was almost repeated. Tolliver pulled his gun on Flynn and threatened him, and Mike sat there grinning.
Charley Crouse arrived at this juncture. He remembered what Charley Green had told him about Flynn's encounter with the Burtons, and he rode alongside Joe Tolliver, saying, "Give me that gun." Joe said, "NO! I'm gonna kill him here and now!" Crouse grasped the gun from his half-brother's hand, and told the grinning Mike Flynn to get out of there.
Tolliver argued with Crouse, telling him if he hadn't interfered, Mike Flynn would be dead, and the Park would have been rid of a nuisance. Crouse argued back: "That man would have killed you with his Winchester or his knife."
Shortly after this incident, Joe Tolliver moved over to Vernal where he became Deputy Sheriff. One day he went into the barber shop for a shave, and, as he sat in the barber-chair lathered up, he took out his pistol and began twirling it. The barber told him, "Joe, put that thing away, before you hurt somebody." Tolliver exclaimed, "Hell, the thing's perfectly safe," and, with that, put the gun to his head, pulled the trigger, and blew his brains out!
There was ample reason for Brown's Park residents to hate the Flynns. Not only were they flagrant rustlers and thieves, but murder was not above their scruples. In about 1910, Mercy Flynn shot and killed Gordon Wilson, who lived on Dummy Bottom. She claimed he had made untoward advances to her, and that she had killed him in self-defence, but few believed her story. Most believed that Flynn planned it, for he soon obtained all of Wilson's horses and personal possessions.
Young Tim Flynn was as much a hellion as his father. He was dreaded as a guest because he would pocket anything not nailed down. Mike Flynn would not allow his sons to attend school. One day young Tim Flynn rode bareback onto the school grounds at Beaver Creek, and some of the older boys began teasing him about his pig-tail, threatening to cut it off. Tim pulled his own knife and threatened to carve anyone who approached; at last the teacher broke it up.
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Mike Flynn was nothing if not bold. He made no secret of his rustling activities. One day he drove up to C.M. Taylor's house - Taylor had settled on the Doc Parsons place - and offered him a side of freshly killed beef. Taylor bluntly refused, saying, "I don't eat stolen beef." Flynn was undaunted by the rejection. "Hell, it tastes just the same," he said, "-maybe better!"
Flynn walked up to Augustine Kendall one day on the street in Rock Springs. Kendall was President of the First National Bank of Rock Springs, and owner of the Park Livestock Company, which owned a good portion of Brown's Park. Flynn bluntly admitted to Kendall that he was rustling his livestock, and defied the banker to do anything about it.
Not long after, Flynn left Brush Creek and ran head-on into Ford DeJournette and Walter Hanks, guns drawn. DeJournette was from Fatfill, North Carolina, and Walter Hanks was his brother-in-law, having married Ford's sister, Laura. DeJournette arrived in Brown's Park in 1897, and by 1900, Kendall had hired him to manage the Park Livestock Company, and Hanks was made secretary. DeJournette later became president of the company, and owned all of Sears Canyon.
Mike Flynn seldom left home unarmed, but on this occasion, he had no weapon. DeJournette and Hanks began threatening Flynn as to what would happen to him if he did not cease rustling Park Livestock cattle, and suggested that it might be wise if he left the country permanently. Just then young Tim Flynn stepped out of the trees, rifle cocked. Stale-mated, DeJournette and Hanks rode away, after issuing a final warning.
Several weeks later, Tom McCarty, Jr. showed up in Brown's Park where he took supper with Josie Bassett's son, Chick McKnight, Speck Welhouse, and others. McCarty - sometimes confused with his father - had been "baching it" in Matt Warner's old cabin on Diamond Mountain, near the head of Crouse Canyon.
After supper, Tom went outside and returned with a rusty old 30-30 rifle, which he cleaned and oiled as they talked. The next morning McCarty left early and was gone all day, returning in the evening. He rode out the next morning for the last time, crossing the ferry at Swallow Canyon. A few hours later, he lay prone on an outcrop of ledges on the Crouse Canyon road to Vernal, and ambushed Mike Flynn. Tom McCarty, Jr. was never heard from again.
Mike Flynn had been on his way to Vernal in his buggy to pick up Mercy and a few supplies. His unbridled team showed up at home, and Tim Flynn rode back along the road, and found his father, sitting slumped over the buggy seat, dead, with several rifle slugs in his back. The point of rocks where he was found has ever after been known as Flynn's Point.
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Speck Welhouse was upset over the killing. He admitted to C.M. Taylor that several weeks earlier he had seen Ford DeJournette with George Shipp and two foremen from the Two Bar Ranch with their heads together, clearly up to no good.
Later, Josie's boy, Chick McKnight, was crossing the Green River at Swallow Canyon on the ferry when he noticed something glistening in the water. Stopping the ferry, he fished the object out with wire, and discovered that it was McCarty's 30-30 rifle. He eventually gave it to C.M. Taylor, who used it as a hunting rifle, naming it "Old Flynn."
John Jarvie, Jr. was enraged by the killing of Flynn, and wrote up a petition to have McCarty found and arrested; but nobody in Brown's Park would sign it. They were only too happy to have Mike Flynn out of their hair.
Tim Flynn, ironically, married Joe Tolliver's daughter, Rosie, and became a respected family man.
Site - 29 MATT WARNER RANCH
At the head of Crouse Creek, on its eastern side, at the very crest of Crouse Canyon, on the northern rim of Diamond Mountain, lies the former ranch of outlaw Matt Warner.
Matt Warner was born Willard Erastus Christiansen at Ephraim, Utah on April 12, 1864. His parents, Christian and Huduva Christiansen, were Danish, Christian having been the first Scandinavian convert to the Mormon church, and prominent in bringing early handcart companies to Utah. Brigham Young called upon Christian to establish the first permanent settlement at what is now Levan, Utah, and here young Willard Christiansen grew to manhood.
At the age of 14, Willard clubbed young Andy Hendrickson with a fence picket in an argument over a pretty girl named Alice Sabey. Believing that he had killed the boy, Willard gathered up his horse and gun and ran away. Hendrickson survived but, suffering from "spells," was confined for a time to the state hospital in Provo. He later tried to kill Warner, and much later, went berserk during a Days of '47 Parade and killed the grand marshal with a shotgun.
Young Willard arrived at the Jim Warren ranch on Diamond Mountain above Brown's Park, under the alias "Matt Warner," in the fall of 1878. In later years Warner wrote:
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I hadn't worked for Jim Warren for a week till I knew that in running away from the law, I had run smack into the half-outlaw world...Diamond Mountain was a half-outlaw world because the ranchers there made their living partly by regular ranch business, and partly by rustling.
Every outfit but one - an Eastern horse-breeding outfit - rustled whenever it had a chance to do it secretly and safely.
I could see right off that Jim Warren's outfit was too free with the brand. In fact I could see that their main business was hunting horses and cattle that didn't happen to be branded, and they was crowding the Warren brand as close to sucking calves and colts as they could get away with.
I haven't been working more than a week when Warren begins to present me with cattle and horses, and tells me I ought to be thinking of accumulating a herd of my own. I knew right away it was a bribe to keep my mouth shut, and get me involved so deep in the rustling game that I would stick and become a good dependable fighter for the Warren outfit...
There were seven cowpunchers and broncho busters on Jim Warren's ranch besides me. I remember the names of all but two: Ben Chestnut, the foreman, George Law, Charley Ward, Jimmy Ryan, and a fellow we called "Buffalo Jack" (Rife)...
In less than three years from the time that I struck Diamond Mountain, I had more than a hundred head of horses of my own.
James Warren was a former priest, a huge man, with a big, bushy beard. As a priest, he had been celibate, but one day he drove a small herd of cattle to Rock Springs for sale, and walked into a restaurant for his dinner, where he met a tall, black-eyed waitress, and lost his heart. He resolved that he would not return to Diamond Mountain without her. He told her a pack of lies, passing himself off as a wealthy Texas cattleman, and three days later he set out for home accompanied by his new bride. News of the new bride fortunately preceded their arrival, in time for Elizabeth Allen and Mary Crouse to tidy up the one-room unfloored cabin, adding a few feminine touches for the bride that a bachelor wouldn't think of.
After his marriage, Jim Warren moved down into the Park, homesteading a place on Beaver Creek, and went to work freighting supplies for John Jarvie, who had recently opened his store. Here, Warren and his wife raised a family of five children.
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Mrs. Warren died an untimely death. She suffered "a terrible neurolgia" for which she took medicine which she kept in the cabinet of a big wall clock "to keep it away from the children." Here also Jim Warren kept the arsenic that he used in poisoning coyotes, and one day Mrs. Warren took her medicine from the wrong bottle.
With Warren's departure from Diamond Mountain, Matt Warner, took over as undisputed leader of the rustling faction, and constructed his cabin at the head of Crouse Canyon, and started a big spread on Pot Creek.
Another of Warren's hands on the ranch when Matt Warner arrived in 1878 was another renegade priest, Cleophas J. Dowd, who had arrived the year previous from California. Dowd was an enigma. Born at Mission Dolores, San Francisco, in 1856, he had been raised as a priest, but had frequently ran way. On his 21st birthday, Dowd took his final vows, then strapped on his guns over his priestly robes, commenced to get drunk, and shot up the town of Sausalito, shooting a man in a saloon during an argument. On his fathers finest thoroughbred racehorse, Dowd fled northward in the fall of 1877, ending up on Jim Warren's ranch on Diamond Mountain.
From Cleophas Dowd, Matt Warner learned the rudiments of gunplay. Dowd had been trained in the art of ballistics at the University of San Francisco, and, in the opinion of some, may have been the greatest gunman in the West. Among his other achievements, he had defeated none other than Jesse James in a shooting match, and had taught Harry Longabaugh to shoot, and had given Longabaugh the sobriquet, "The Sundance Kid."
In Matt's case, Dowd encouraged the youth to lock himself in a cellar for three days, doing nothing but sham-drawing his hand from an empty holster, and pointing his finger at a small hole in the dirt ceiling of the cellar. Then, for three days more, Matt practiced doing the same thing with a real gun and live ammunition, becoming at last instinctively adept at drawing and shooting without hitting the edges of the hole. When he emerged after a week, Matt later reported that he was "damned near deaf and blind, but, by God, I could shoot!"
His first gunfight took place at the age of 15, when he beat a Mexican outlaw named Polito to the draw, shooting him through the lung, and then riding 50 miles to Vernal to bring a doctor.
Then one day, to his surprise, the brother of Andy Hendrickson showed up on Diamond Mountain, and for the first time Matt learned that Andy had not died from his bashing. Now, Matt felt free to get in touch with his parents, and, not long after he wrote them a letter, his 13 year-old nephew, Lew McCarty, arrived for a visit. (Matt's sister, Tene Christiansen, had married outlaw Tom McCarty).
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Lew McCarty - known as Kid McCarty - was a wild and impetuous youth, spoiling for excitement. It was not long before the opportunity presented itself. Elzy Lay brought word to Matt Warner that a Jewish merchant, owner of a Rock Springs, Wyoming, dry goods and clothing store, had gone bankrupt. His creditors having attached the merchandise, the Jew loaded everything into two wagons during the night, and, hiring a freighter named Bill Sparks to drive one of them, headed south.
Once across the Wyoming-Utah border, the Jew relaxed enough to begin bragging about having out-witted the Wyoming authorities. Lay told Warner that the merchant was in camp further down Pot Creek near the Jim Warren ranch en route to Vernal, where he intended to set up shop.
Warner, himself only 16 or 17, and his 13 year-old nephew, Lew McCarty, were quick to grasp the implications of the situation. The merchandise was already contraband, so if they were to relieve the merchant of it, he could not have recourse with the law. Moreover, for the three youths - Lay was about the some age as Lew McCarty - it promised great fun.
Having finished their supper, the merchant and Bill Sparks (who may have been a party to the robbery, secretly) had just rolled into their blankets when three men, their hats pulled down over their foreheads and the lower position of their faces masked by bandannas, rode into camp, guns drawn. While one of the bandits covered the two men with his six-shooter, the other two youths loosened the canvas sheets which covered the wagons and transferred the contents to a string of pack animals. As soon as they had completed their task, the young bandits warned the merchant and his companion that it wouldn't be healthy for daylight to find them in that part of the country.
The stolen goods were taken to Matt's cabin where they discovered that it consisted of yard goods, dresses, women's underthings, thread, needles, pins, pin cushions, ribbons, safety pins, buttons, hooks and eyes, and a myriad of other notions they were at a loss to know what to do with. Then wrote Matt:
All at once somebody thought of the sad condition of the poor ranchers in Brown's Park...They was having a hard time. Suddenly their poverty almost wrung out hearts...When we got over to Brown's Park with the goods, we heard there would be a dance in the schoolhouse (on Beaver Creek) next Friday night. That made us think of a plan to distribute them goods among the poor...
Proceeding to John Jarvie's store, the boys explained the situation to the old Scotsman, and requested that he hand out the clothing gratis to his customers, telling them to wear it to the "masquerade" dance. Matt wrote:
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In a little while everybody in the valley heard how we got the goods, and the whole valley thought it was a great joke, and was laughing about it. It ain't on record either that anybody refused to take the stolen goods. Every last man, woman, and child...came to the dance dressed in them cheap, misfit clothes. It was the funniest sight I ever saw in my life.
Having tasted the excitement of banditry, Matt was "hooked." With a friend named Joe Brooks, he held up a combination store-bank in St. John's, Arizona, and escaped to Robbers Roost with only $837.
About this same time, Matt became involved in an incident which put him at odds, temporarily, with his old friend, Cleophas Dowd. At this time, about the only eligible girls in Brown's Park were Josie and Ann Bassett. Thus it was that when a new girl arrived - a strikingly beautiful girl - it drew the immediate interest of every bachelor in the Park.
Ella Rophena Colton was the pretty 16 year-old daughter of Mormon Bishop Charles E. Colton of Vernal. Charles Colton had gone into partnership with his brother, Sterling Colton, in ranging a herd of cattle on the Hoy Bottom in Brown's Park. Ella spent the summer there, riding out daily on her fine horse, side-saddle, along the meadows of the Green River.
Every attempt by the young bachelors to meet pretty Ella Colton were met with stern opposition by her strongly religious and protective father. Therefore, with the help of the fertile mind of Matt Warner, a plan was devised whereby they might not only make Ella's acquaintance, but ingratiate themselves with her parents.
The plan was to hide the eligible bachelors on horseback in a river thicket when Ella made her daily ride; several other ruffians would ride along, fire their guns in the air, frighten the girl's horse to bolt, and then one of the young knights would "rescue" her and become her hero.
On the day set aside for the event, Matt Warner aligned himself with several other young bucks, which included Buffalo Jack Rife, Felix Meyers, and Lew McCarty,, and awaited Ella's morning ride. Meanwhile, several others, including Charley Crouse, agreed to stampede her mount.
Ella came riding by, as per her usual schedule, and Crouse and his cohorts began firing their guns, and, true to the plan, the girl's horse bolted and ran away along the Hoy Bottoms. As her mount ran full-tilt and out of control, Ella screamed and tried to hold on, while her would-be rescuers charged out of the thicket in pursuit, each hoping to be the one favored by catching up to her first.
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However, things went awry and spoiled the plan. Ella's horse stepped in a prairie dog hole and sent the girl tumbling, breaking her hip. Just at that moment, Cleophas Dowd came riding along, and, seeing what was occurring, spurred his horse in pursuit. Crouse, still firing his gun in the air, tried to stop Dowd, but the latter drew his own gun and fired at Crouse as he passed, the bullet ricocheting off the barrel of Crouse's six-shooter, slightly wounding him in his one good thumb.
Catching up to Matt Warner and the young hellions, Dowd hurled curses at them, and threatened to shoot them one and all if they did not depart post-haste. Dowd then gathered the injured girl up, placed her on his horse, and took her home, thus becoming, accidentally, the hero which Matt and his friends could not be, by design.
Ella fell in love with her rescuer, but Dowd's attempts to court her were rebuffed by her staunch father, who objected to the age difference, the fact that Dowd was Catholic and not Mormon, and to his reputation. Colton took his daughter back to Vernal to keep her remote from her knight-errant.
On Ella Colton's eighteenth birthday, a huge party was held in her uncle Sterling Colton's house in Maeser Ward, near Vernal. It so happened that Sterling Colton was sheriff of Uintah County, Utah, but this was no deterrent to Cleophas Dowd who rode boldly up to the door of the Colton house and kidnapped Ella at gunpoint, eloping with her to Brown's Park.
Sheriff Colton quickly organized a posse and went in pursuit of his niece, even though there is no indication other than that she went willingly to her fate. When the posse arrived at the Jim Warren ranch on Diamond Mountain, he found a message waiting for him from Dowd, which stated, in essence, that Ella was of legal age to make up her own mind, that before the posse could reach Brown's Park, the marriage would be solemnized, and, more importantly, Matt Warner with 15 men had barricaded Crouse Canyon mid-way, and were prepared to hold the posse at bay long enough to complete the ceremony.
Sheriff Colton turned back to Vernal, and the marriage was solemnized by Warren P. Parsons, Justice of the Peace. Matt Warner decided to take a vacation to visit his brother-in-law, Tom McCarty. From that time, Matt Warner became a full-fledged bank and train robber.
With Tom McCarty and Josh Sweat, Matt rustled cattle in Mexico and sold them to the Chisholm Ranch in New Mexico, until interrupted by a gunfight with federal officers during which four of the officers were killed and Josh Sweat was severely wounded. The outlaws barely escaped after a 700-mile chase.
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On November 3, 1887, Matt Warner, Butch Cassidy, Tom and Bill McCarty, and Bill Madden held up a Denver & Rio Grande train five miles out of Grand Junction, Colorado. Not long thereafter, Matt Warner and Tom McCarty robbed the First National Bank of Denver, escaping with $21,000. At ten o'clock on the morning of June 24, 1889, Matt Warner, Tom McCarty and Butch Cassidy robbed the bank of Telluride, Colorado of $10,500. Butch's younger brother, Dan Parker, held the relay of horses. Matt, Tom and Butch escaped to Brown's Park.
Leaving Butch Cassidy after a chase by bloodhounds near Lander, Wyoming, Matt and Tom drifted to Star Valley where Matt set up a makeshift saloon, on the back wall of which he displayed a $10,000 bank note, taken in the Denver robbery, which they dared not cash.
On September 4, 1889, Matt Warner married 14 year-old Rosa Rumel, and Tom McCarty married her half-sister, Sadie Morgan, in a joint ceremony in Montpelier, Idaho. Tom McCarty's first wife, Matt's sister Tene, had died some time before. They drifted next to Butte, Montana, where they robbed a mining camp gambling hall. That netted them $1,800, enough to take them comfortably to Haines, Oregon, where they recruited Tom's brother, Bill McCarty. The triumvirate became known throughout the Northwest as "The Invincible Three," and compiled an impressive list of robberies.
After a brief sojourn with Butch Cassidy during the Johnson County War in Wyoming, Matt returned to the Northwest where he, with Tom, Bill and George McCarty, held up the bank at Roslyn, Washington for more than $20,000. Tom McCarty killed a Negro during this robbery, which occurred September 24, 1892, and the law grew hot for their capture.
Matt was arrested on his ranch and thrown into jail at Ellensburg, Washington, with George McCarty. They made one attempt to escape but were recaptured.
They were finally released on July 24, 1893, after paying unscrupulous lawyers $41,000. Having had enough of the Northwest, Matt returned to his Diamond Mountain ranch where he reunited with his old comrades-in-arms, Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay.
Cassidy, meeting with Matt and others in Warner's cabin on Diamond Mountain, encouraged him to join the new gang Cassidy was organizing, but Warner declined. He had promised his young wife that he would quit the Outlaw Trail and settle down. He had, in fact, installed his wife and little daughter, Hayda, in the old Doc Parsons cabin in Brown's Park, while he worked on restoring his Diamond Mountain ranch. Rosa was also pregnant with their second child.
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While fetching water from the spring-house on the Parsons place, Rosa slipped and fell, injuring her hip, which ultimately became cancerous. While she was laid up with her injury and pregnancy, Rosa was attended in the Parsons cabin by Etta Place, while Matt was away. When Rosa's hip became so infected that she required medical attention, Mary Crouse and Etta Place accompanied her to Vernal. It became necessary to have Rosa's leg amputated above the knee, which was done in the military hospital at Fort Duchesne.
Mary Crouse sent for Rosa's mother, Mrs. Rumel, a very proper lady (Mary Crouse said she was "an arrogant snob"), who insisted that Mary Crouse, who had never done so, wear a hat while in town.
While Matt was at Vernal, mining promoter Henry C. Coleman approached him and offered him a job, to move Coleman's camp from Dry Fork Canyon to Matt's Diamond Mountain ranch. With Rosa ill, Matt welcomed the money, and set out to move the camp, with his gambler friend, Bill Wall,, to keep him company. Coleman had carefully avoided mentioning that he was being followed by three desperate men, Ike and Dick Staunton and Dave Milton, and that his real purpose in hiring Matt was for protection.
As they rode into Coleman's tent camp where Bob Swift (owner of the "Bucket O'Blood" saloon at Linwood), one of Matt's good friends, was tending camp, the Stauntons and Milton opened fire from ambush. When the gunfight was over, Matt had killed Dave Milton and Dick Staunton, and Ike Staunton was crippled for life. Matt Warner and Bill Wall were thrown into jail at Vernal.
An angry mob tried to storm the jail and lynch the two men, but Matt's quick wit saved him; he popped a paper sack, yelling that he had a gun, and the mob quickly dispersed.
Word was sent to Butch Cassidy who was at the Antler Saloon, and, accompanied by Charley Crouse and Bob Swift, Butch stood guard duty in front of the jail the rest of the night.
Matt Warner and Bill Wall went to trail at Ogden in September 1896. Cassidy offered to break Matt out of jail, but Matt smuggled a note out to Charley Crouse to give to Butch, asking him to hire a good lawyer. Butch Cassidy, Elzy Lay, and Bub Meeks robbed the bank at Montpelier, Idaho for nearly $17,000 to provide funds for Matt's defense. Nevertheless, Matt and Bill were sentenced to five years in the Utah Stat Penitentiary.
Meanwhile, Rosa Warner had given birth to her child, a son, but discovered that she required a second amputation, and was transferred to Salt Lake City. Butch Cassidy paid all of her medical bills. Unfortunately, Rosa died shortly thereafter, while Matt was still in prison.
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Matt gave up the boy, Rex, for adoption to his old friend, Frank Taylor, of Salina, Utah, who was also taking care of his daughter, Hayda. Rex died at age seventeen. Then, Matt's father, Christian Christiansen, died at Manti, Utah, and it was the final crushing blow which was destined to reform Warner from an outlaw to one of Utah's most respected citizens and lawmen.
On January 21,, 1900, Utah Governor Heber M. Wells gave an unconditional pardon to Matt Warner, on the provision that Matt would seek out Butch Cassidy and try to convince him to surrender. Matt carried his "pardon," a scribbled note which stated simply, "This man is O.K.," in the Governor's handwriting, in his wallet for the rest of his life.
Matt Warner died at Price, Utah, on December 31, 1938. He never returned to live on his old ranch on Diamond Mountain. His nephew, Tom McCarty, Jr., lived there off and on until 1915, when he shot and killed Mike Flynn in Crouse Canyon, several miles north, and left the country.
Site - 30 DIAMOND MOUNTAIN
In 1872, two prospectors, Philip Arnold and John Slack, salted a remote spot near Brown's Park with rough gems, convinced San Francisco Banker William Ralston and his experts that they had discovered a mine loaded with diamonds, and swindled Ralston out of a fortune before the fraud was exposed by a brilliant government geologist named Clarence King. Ralston committed suicide by walking into the San Francisco Bay and drowning.
It has long been supposed that the site of this swindle was Diamond Mountain, above (south) Brown's Park, and thus the origin of the name, but this is incorrect. The actual site was a few miles northeast of Brown's Park, at Diamond Peak, in Colorado.
There was a second diamond swindle on Diamond Mountain itself, when a couple of copy-cat diamond salters bilked some of the area settlers into investing in a salted field, then absconded with the money. George Solomon, who lived in Connor Basin, trailed one of the men through Arizona to Southern California, where he allegedly dispatched him.
The actual name of Diamond Mountain appears to have been derived from cattleman James Diamond who was among the first to range his heards there. Over the years, many ranches came and went from Diamond Mountain. Some that might be mentioned: Matt Warner, Jim Warren, Mike Flynn, Charles Crouse, Orson Burton, William C. Boren, Ed Rife, and others, to name but a few.
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Site - 31 LITTLE BROWN'S HOLE
About fives miles up-river (west) from Brown's Park is a little valley in the midst of the canyons, a miniature of Brown's Park, known as "Little Brown's Hole," but more familiarly as "Little Hole." The history of this small valley rivals that of its larger namesake.
One of the earliest known residents of this isolated valley was a man named John Johnston, who spent several winters in the "hole" trapping beaver. He constructed one of the earliest cabins there, sharing his time between that place and another he had near Battle Mountain on the Little Snake River. At the latter place he settled with his Indian wife.
One winter, Johnston left his pregnant wife at Battle Mountain to trap the winter months at Little Hole. When he had returned home in the spring, he discovered that a party of Crow Indians murdered his wife, and disemboweled her, killing her unborn child. Johnston placed the bones of his wife and child in a cauldron and built a rock cairn around them on the top of Battle Mountain. Each year, on the anniversary of their deaths, Johnston would return to the cairn, remove the bones, and mourn for them.
But he did something more; he began a vendetta against the Crow Indians which lasted a lifetime. He hunted Crows whenever he could, killed them, and ate their livers - a superstition of the Crows being that such an act would prevent their spirits from entering the "happy hunting ground."
It is said that during his lifetime, Johnston killed more than 400 Crow braves, earning for himself the nickname "Liver-eating" Johnston. For a time he was a sheriff in Montana, and died in an old soldier's home in California.
Some years ago, a Robert Redford movie entitled "Jeremiah Johnson" chronicled the Liver-eater's life. Ironically, the opening scenes of the movie were filmed on location at Little Hole.
Many cattlemen wintered their hears in the sheltered little valley. In 1871, J.S. Hoy found George W. Richards, Jack Gunn, a man named Smith, and a bear-killing trapper dressed in buckskin and called "Old Wes," had wintered their herd there. They reported the valley was plagued with packs of wolves.
Little Hole was also plagued by a pack of wolves of another sort - outlaws. As early as 1868 the Tom Crowley Gang had settled there, building a cabin of railroad ties which floated down river from the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad in Wyoming - the cabin still stands.
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The gang, which at various times included such men as Mexican Charlie, Cherokee Bill Pigeon, John Bennett, and others, plagued the overland herds, and did a little bootlegging to the Indians on the side.
Mexican Charlie was killed in the cabin during a poker game and buried near a spring nearby. His grave may still be seen, even though some years ago the Burton boys dug up his body, and donated two ivory-handled revolvers, a belt-buckle, and Spanish spurs to a Colorado museum.
The Tom Crowley Gang left Little Hole hurriedly with the advent of Cleophas J. Dowd, who ran his horses there. At first the two factions cohabited the valley without incident, but when the gang brought in a steam boiler with which to distill bootleg whiskey, some of the ingredients, including lye, poured out into a spring, poisoning some of Dowd's prized animals. He forced Bennett, Pigeon, and several others to stoke up the boiler until it exploded, and drove the mash-covered gang from Little Hole permanently.
Tom Davenport did some ranching there for a time, leaving his name to the mountain above, and to the little stream which flows through the valley and empties into the Green River. Davenport was enterprising enough to construct a reservoir on the mountain above the valley to ensure water during dry periods.
For many years Little Hole, and Devil's Hole, several miles below, was the home of an old hermit named Amos Hill. He was a cantankerous old reprobate who had at one time owned a ranch adjoining that of Robert Harvey near Mountain View, Wyoming.
Amos Hill hated people. His fences were posted with "No Trespassing" signs, he kept a rifle leaning against his door jamb, and he never left his ranch except to purchase groceries and whiskey. On one occasion, he beat a man named Mount severely for fishing through the ice of a stream on his property. A man named Link Gray had married the widow of Bill Lamb, a neighbor who in times past had had great difficulty with Hill. Hill made a few unkind comments about Lamb's widow, and Link Gray gave Amos a sound thrashing, which did nothing to improve his disposition.
Then one day Hill had a dispute over water rights with a neighbor named Dell Watson, and commenced to beat the latter with the blade of his shovel. Watson went to Evanston and preferred charges. Sheriff John Ward and his deputy Bob Calverly (the man who arrested Butch Cassidy and sent him to prison) came down to Mountain View and arrest Amos Hill, bringing him to trial.
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However, before the final verdict was brought, Amos Hill disappeared. For a time he was a hunter for the Dyer coppermine in the Uintah Mountains above Vernal, and then again disappeared. Then, in the mid-1890's, Nathan Galloway, a trapper and river-runner, encountered the old man trudging along the river bottom in Red Canyon with traps slung over his shoulder. Galloway transported him downriver to Devil's Hole, about three miles below Little Hole, where Amos made his home, a crude dug-out in the hill with a small garden patch irrigated by a spring. Galloway reported his presence to authorities at Vernal, but since Utah had nothing against the hermit, he was left alone.
Amos Hill struck up a friendship of sorts with Butch Cassidy and members of the Wild Bunch, who frequently used Little Hole as a hideout. Amos made two or three trips a year into Vernal or Linwood for supplies, each time leading one or two pack mules, purchasing large amounts of food and ammunition, paying in cash. Nearly everyone knew he was supplying the outlaws.
Sometime near 1900 Amos Hill moved to a dugout in the canyon between Trail and Allen reeks, and visited frequently with the James Swett family who lived at Greendale. Eventually, in his eighties, he went to live with the Swett family at Vernal, and there died. For clothes, Amos wore ragged bib overalls and a piece of canvas with a hole cut out for his head, and his boots were made of fifteen inch squares of rawhide lashed to old rubber boot tops. He often carried on a one-sided conversation with his pistol, which he called "Uncle Sam."
Charley Teters of Brown's Park lived at Little Hole for a time, as did Albert "Speck" Welhouse. Charley Green, cousin of Mike Flynn's wife, made bootleg whiskey there near the turn of the century.
Ben Kelly made Little Hole his home for many years. Benjamin Perrin Kelly had married Isabella "Belle" Davis, daughter of Allen and Matilda Davis of Vernal. Belle died suddenly on October 14, 1896, aged 21, and Ben married her sister, Florence Viola Davis on March 20, 1901. His wives were sisters of Maude Davis, who married outlaw Elzy Lay. Ben Kelly's son, Roy Kelly, was a lanky, good-looking cowboy who often worked for Charley Crouse in the Park. Crouse's daughter, Minnie, fell for his charms and went with to live at Little Hole for a time.
The history of Little Brown's Hole has never been written. From the days of the Indians to the coming of the trappers, outlaws, and settlers, its history rivals that of Brown's Park, just five miles downriver.
This was carved by
Butch Cassidy
Paul (Snake) Tabbee
Great grandson of the Great Chief Tabby (Ute Indian)
