Tales from Torrey
and of Capitol Reef
by James H. Knipmeyer

Part IV— Early 1970's: The Prodigal Son Returns

Three of the next four years I returned to Torrey and Capitol Reef, albeit for only two or three days at a time. In 1970, after my first year of teaching, I made another raft trip down the Colorado River. This time, however, it was a five-day float through Cataract Canyon of southeastern Utah.

At the conclusion of the trip I drove from Moab over to Torrey. Like the previous year, I pulled in at the Chuck Wagon late in the afternoon, but this time with a little more than 64 cents in my pocket! I spent most of the evening visiting with my old friends, and the following day I stayed around town. I went over to Rocky’s place and was pleased to see that my carport was still standing. With my lack of any experience in carpentry work, I suppose in the back of my mind I subconsciously wondered if it had withstood the winter snows and wind.

After another evening of visiting with the Elletts and Tolberts, I left for Missouri and home the next morning. Rocky had not yet arrived from her college teaching in California, and Flora and Theresa were both married now. So there simply were not as many of my old acquaintances around any longer.

I did not get back to Utah at all in 1971. However, I had a good “excuse,” I had gotten married! But in 1972, I brought Bonnie, my new wife of one year, to Torrey and Capitol Reef to show her my Utah “home.” We came in via the dirt road over Boulder Mountain, and as we were going down the northeast side we passed a line of perhaps a dozen or so girls hiking along the shoulder. Most appeared to be in their early teens, and as Bonnie observed, “They were sure big and husky.” She, of course, had heard all about my “girlfriends” at the Chuck Wagon in Torrey, and now confided that, “If all Utah girls are like those hikers, then I won’t be worried when you come out here by yourself.” I assured her that not all Utah girls were big and husky, but that she needn’t worry in any case.

We checked in at the motel and were even able to get “my” room, Number 5. After introductions all around, Mrs. Ellett proclaimed Bonnie a “very nice girl,” and added that that was not surprising knowing me as she did! To this day I take that statement as one of the best compliments that I have ever received. Of course I drove Bonnie all around town, which did not take too long. I somewhat proudly showed her my carport, and also noted that Rocky was in the process of having a new house built on the eastern side of the lot.

The next day Bonnie and I drove down to Capitol Reef. We took the Scenic Drive to Capitol Gorge and left the car at the parking area. I had not been here since my first visit back in 1963, and this time Bonnie and I walked farther past the prehistoric petroglyphs to the so-called Narrows and Pioneer Register. As the name implies, The Narrows are a half-mile or so stretch of the gorge where the walls tower to over 300 feet in height, but are only some twenty feet apart at the bottom. For the nearly eighty years that Capitol Gorge was used as the principal route through the barrier of the Capitol Reef cliffs, this area caused the most problems for pioneer wagons, as well as modern automobiles. After nearly every heavy rainstorm and subsequent period of high water, the road would be closed temporarily while crews removed and cleared rocks and debris from the roadway.   Pioneer Register, Capitol Gorge West End of the Narrows

At a long stretch of cliff wall on the north side of The Narrows, early travelers had left their names, and often the date, carved into the relatively soft sandstone. As more and more people added their signatures, the wall became known as the Pioneer Register. Today scores of names and dates can be seen from 1877 up until modern times, though since the establishment of Capitol Reef as a national monument, such carvings are not only discouraged, but are illegal. At least forty of the names were left previous to 1900. Bonnie found one of the more intriguing inscriptions. Pecked into the rock with some sort of pick or metal punch, are block letters spelling out the words, “CASS HITE IS A ----,” followed by a crude drawing of what appeared to be the figure of a person, seemingly leading a horse out of a corral. Beneath this are the initials “T. C.” and a date, “1885 MARCH 7.” Cass Hite was a well-known prospector and miner along the Colorado River southeast of Capitol Reef, but according to accounts by some early Mormon stockmen, he was also believed to have been involved in occasional rustling operations. I thought that perhaps the entire inscription was meant to imply, “Cass Hite Is A horsethief.” Others, however, view the drawing from a little different perspective and interpret it to mean, “Cass Hite Is A horse’s ass.” Not a very flattering endorsement either way you look at it!

Historically, however, the most interesting inscription to me is that left by one Theodore Christensen. It is unusual in several respects. First, it is located some twenty feet up on the canyon wall. Just how he got up there is rather hard to fathom. Secondly, his message is inscribed in script-style writing, not printing. Lastly, he not only left us his name and the date, but also his occupation, where he was from, where he was going, and finally, what the result of his trip was. The entire inscription reads thusly: “Theodore Christensen febuare(sic) 18. 1885 Prospector Gunnison, Ut henre(sic) mounte(sic) or bust busted by god.”

This was another August vacation for me. Bonnie and I had both been in summer school working on our Master’s degrees, so this was the hottest time of the year. Instead of doing more hiking, I decided to drive us up into the Cathedral Valley section of the park. In 1969, the then monument was significantly enlarged, and part of the new area encompassed Upper Cathedral Valley, The Hartnet, and South Desert. I wanted to show Bonnie where we had “walked out” back in 1968.

We tried to go in from the south, as the three of us had done in the jeep, but we were afraid to try fording the waters of the Fremont River in my wife’s 1969 Ford Mustang. So we ended up going in the “back way,” which was fine with me since it meant going by a new route. At least it was new to me. Actually, it followed the old 1880s wagon road of David Hartnet from the small town of Fremont, but which was now suitable for “high clearance vehicles.”

It was pleasant and cool as we crossed the northern flank of Thousand Lake Mountain. There were trees, green bushes, and even grass, quite a contrast to the mostly bare rock and heat of Capitol Gorge. At the shallow pass between the rounded elevations of Geyser Peak on one side and Hen’s Hole Peak on the other, we were almost 3,000 feet higher than Cathedral Valley itself. This afforded a tremendous view to the north, south, and east. Far to the northeast rose the gentle slopes of the San Rafael Swell, while to the southeast towered the pyramided forms of the Henry Mountains. Below us, washed almost devoid of color by the heat and sun, lay the basins of South Desert and Cathedral Valley.

We drove carefully down the mountainside in our “low clearance vehicle” until we eventually came out onto the narrow ridge dividing the two basins. The steep dugway heading down into South Desert was now closed to motorized traffic, but I could point out to Bonnie where the three of us had camped, and the approximate point at which our jeep had broken down. We did walk down to what our newer maps now labeled as South Desert Spring. The old cattle troughs were still there, though again there was no running water. It would have to be dug out to produce any actual flow.

Upper Cathedral with Hens Hole Peak in background

We did drive down to the north into Upper Cathedral Valley, a first for me. By way of explanation, this was called “Upper” Cathedral Valley to distinguish it from another set of “cathedrals,” several miles to the east on one side of what is known as the Middle Desert, called “Lower” Cathedral Valley. It was quite hot down here in the bottom of the basin in the middle of the afternoon, so Bonnie and I did not tarry long. We drove past the eroded cathedral-like buttes and followed the road that eventually curved back to the west and joined our earlier route about halfway up the mountain. It made for a very scenic, but warm, loop trip.

My wife and I stayed in Torrey one more night, and then headed out east and south. Just a few miles after leaving the eastern boundary of Capitol Reef, we turned off south on an “improved” dirt road leading some sixty miles to Bullfrog Basin on Lake Powell. For most of this distance the road paralleled the eastern flank of the Waterpocket Fold. The major part of this dramatic geological feature was included in the enlarged Capitol Reef National Monument, along with Cathedral Valley, in 1969. Except for one fifteen-mile stretch, however, the road itself lies just outside of the present park boundary.

About three miles south of the turnoff from Highway 24, the dry and bare-looking landscape off to the west was suddenly transformed into a bright green. These were the irrigated fields of the Durfey Ranch on the banks of Pleasant Creek. Backed by the cream-colored domes of Capitol Reef and a “Utah” blue sky, it made an extremely colorful scene.

This area is still referred to as Notom and is shown as such on older maps. Settled in 1886, it soon attracted enough farmers and ranchers that the community was given a post office. Up to that time it was known as Pleasant Dale, but when the post office was granted, and it was found that that name was already in use, the residents had to come up with a new title. It is said that the area’s first settler, and also the first postmaster, Jorgen Christian Smith, suggested “Notom,” though modern histories claim no knowledge of the significance of the name. Notom, Utah

However, Mrs. Ellett, back in Torrey, had told me that she grew up as a little girl at Notom. She maintained that the name was actually a contraction of two words, “no” and “Tom.” According to Mrs. Ellett’s story, about the time the settlement was to receive its post office, a local girl was being persistently “sparked” by a young man from a nearby community. She was continually having to rebuff his advances, and saying, “No, Tom!”

Be that as it may, in the early 1900s many residents began to move away, and Notom finally ceased to exist as a town. The Durfey family purchased much of the land beginning in 1919, and their descendants still ranch there today.

Climbing gently upward to the higher level of Cedar Mesa, the road now afforded us good views to the east, also. We could look across the nearly flat swale of the valley of Sandy Creek to the triplet peaks of the Henry Mountains. They are famous, geographically speaking at least, for being the last major mountain range in the contiguous forty-eight United States to be named and mapped scientifically. The Mormon party of James Andrus in 1866, which espied them some twenty-five miles away from the flank of Boulder Mountain, called them the Pot-se-Nip Mountains, a Paiute Indian name. During his descent of the Colorado River in 1869, Major John Wesley Powell and his men simply referred to them as the Unknown Mountains. On his second voyage in 1871-1872, Powell amended that to the Dirty Devil Mountains, after the river that flows on their eastern side. Their present name of the Henrys was ultimately bestowed when the first official maps were made of the region by government geographers in 1872-73. Joseph Henry was the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., which helped finance Powell’s second expedition.

Just a few miles before leaving the new national park boundary, Bonnie and I passed the turnoff to the west of the so-called Burr Trail. This road traverses the only relatively easy crossing over the entire southern section of the Waterpocket Fold. Beginning in the late 1880s, livestock grazed on the high slopes of the Aquarius Plateau during the summer. In winter they were herded east to the lower elevations of Halls Creek and the western foot of the Henry Mountains. The route was named for John A. Burr of Escalante, who in the late 1880s took livestock over the trail from his summer range on Boulder Mountain to his winter range in Bullfrog Basin. Following an ancient Indian trail, he was the first to “improve” the precipitous descent down the east face of the fold. But this descent remained only a steep horse and sheep trail until the late 1940s. One result of the uranium boom in the Circle Cliffs area just to the west was the blasting and bulldozing of a crude road up the boulder-strewn slope by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948. This, then, provided the primary route for trucks carrying uranium ore from mines in the Circle Cliffs basin. But it was suitable only for low-gear trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles until the Burr Trail switchbacks were widened and improved in 1967. My brother Bill and I, and Mike Martin, had taken our jeep up this road in 1968, but even then it was merely graded dirt. Switchbacks, Burr Trail

Since that time the Burr Trail road has developed into one of the most controversial roads issues in recent history. Beginning in the late 1960s, Garfield County and the state of Utah began to discuss the possibility of “opening up” the relatively isolated area of the Waterpocket Fold country to increased tourist traffic. Countering this, however, were various conservation and environmental groups that wanted to keep the present roads as they were. Ultimately, the county did pave the Burr Trail road starting at the small town of Boulder, and by the spring of 1991, they had reached the western boundary of Capitol Reef National Park. But there the park service said in effect, “no farther.”

The Burr Trail road has continued to be the subject of suits and countersuits in the courts, and arguments and debates between the various groups involved. The county and state would still like to see that portion of the road within the national park reconstructed and paved. The National Park Service, under a 1987 Utah State Supreme Court injunction, has, up till the present, prevented any more improvements beyond normal road maintenance of the now graded and graveled route to satisfy an “all weather” criterion. And there, at least for now, the matter stands.

Halls Creek overlook

Our last stop before proceeding on to Lake Powell was at a point just barely inside the eastern boundary of the national park. A short spur road led westwards a couple of miles to an overlook of the deep gorge of Halls Creek, backed by the steeply sloping flank of the Waterpocket Fold. Directly across the canyon, which in this stretch is sometimes known as Grand Gulch, an unusual double-opening natural bridge can easily be seen if the light and shadows are right. At that time in 1972 it was known as Brimhall Double Arch, though it is shown on today’s maps as Brimhall Bridge. This was a little-used and very rough road that led to the overlook. According to the park service register, my wife and I were the first people there in some ten days. As we made the loop leading back to the Notom-Bullfrog road, Bonnie walked ahead of the car to toss and roll the larger rocks out of the way. We could easily see why this spur-road was not recommended for ordinary passenger cars.

The following year, 1973, found my brother and I once again in Torrey for a short stay. Since our graduation from college, I had moved to Lee’s Summit, Missouri, and a career in teaching, as well as having gotten married. Bill had subsequently moved to Colorado. This was the first time we had gotten to go on a “trip” together since the jeep breakdown five years earlier. We had just completed a backpacking hike over in the Escalante River canyons, and had stopped in Torrey on our way back home.

What a surprise we received. The Elletts, Rulon and Bertha, had sold the Chuck Wagon, and the Tolberts, LaVoy and Janece, were in the process of getting all their belongings ready to move. The Elletts, of course, had their ranch south of Bicknell, but the Tolberts had no other place to go. They had five children now, and a sixth on the way, and there was simply no adequate sized houses for rent anywhere in the county. The plan, therefore, was to go north to Logan, where LaVoy would attend summer school at Utah State. There, rental housing would not be a problem. In the fall he would return to his teaching job at Wayne High School in Bicknell, and, hopefully, by then a suitable home would turn up.

In the meantime, they had to do something with their furniture and larger possessions. Consequently, my brother and I stayed around for the next couple of days and helped LaVoy move some of those items. The majority we took to the Ellett’s ranch to store, and some to another friend’s ranch south of Torrey near the Fremont River. On the western side of the Chuck Wagon property was an old log cabin, and the new owner was going to allow the Tolberts to temporarily keep some of their stuff there for the summer months.

Bill and I ate with the Tolbert family, and, of course, we stayed at the Chuck Wagon motel. We were glad to help out in a small way to partially repay them for all of the nice things they had done for us over the years. But when the two of us finally left for our homes, it was rather a sad time. Neither the Elletts nor the Tolberts would be in Torrey any longer. Our Utah “families” would now be gone.

Introduction
Part I — 1963: The First Visit
Part II — The Three Nephites
Part III — 1969: Home
Part V — 1967-1987 Interlude
Part VI — 1990's: The Last Years
Epilogue — 2000