Giants of San Juan

by Buckley Jensen John Patterson, a.k.a. “Big John”, is hard to miss around Blanding. Standing 6-4 and weighing more than 300 pounds, you would not want to meet him in a dark alley if he had a bad day. But not to quake… this writer found him to be a gentle, well educated, deeply...
As the end grew nigh, he was surrounded by his large family. Some of his last words were “the expulsion from our home is almost forgotten in the joy I find in my affectionate and loving children. It makes me feel that while I may have been a failure financially, yet I have had the...
GIANTS OF SAN JUANby Buckley Jensen William Morley Black is somewhat of an enigma for our purposes in this series. On the one hand, he only lived in San Juan County for a little over two years, which would normally eliminate him from consideration as a “Giant” of San Juan. On the other...
LIFE IS GOOD by Buckley Jensen How would you like to start selling your drawings in the fourth grade for a nickel and 20 years later command $65,000 for a single work of art? If that sounds like something out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, you best believe it because Monticello now...
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN by Buckley Jensen Albert R. Lyman, who served for many years with Lemuel H. Redd Jr. in the San Juan Stake Presidency, knew the man about as well as anyone. Said Lyman, “The history of Bluff up to l906 is, in a general way, the history of L. H. Redd. He was part of...
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN by Buckley Jensen We have published 28 of 29 installments in the ongoing “Giants of San Juan” series. I have enjoyed researching the lives of the great men and woman featured so far. Each of them have made contributions to the richness of our legacy in San Juan...
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN by Buckley Jensen Four days after Christmas in l922, a Navajo father took his tiny, premature new-born son from his hogan into the bitter cold. He placed his son on a blanket on the frozen ground and began chanting a blessing. He anointed the baby’s feet, knees,...
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN by Buckley Jensen Filed deep in the memory of almost anyone who grew up in San Juan County in the last 80 years are the melodic refrains of the Blue Mountain Song. Written in the l930’s by a young attorney (Fred Keller) who had taken up residence in Monticello, with...
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN by Buckley Jensen Few who lived through it would argue against the fact that the Uranium Boom of the l950’s was the lynchpin that put San Juan County on the map. Prior to that time, San Juan County was a primitive backwater, inhabited mostly by Native Americans and...
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN by Buckley Jensen One of the principle reasons Mormon Pioneers were dispatched to the vast wilderness of Southeastern Utah in 1879 was to befriend the Indians. Seemed simple enough. However, the Indians saw the pioneers as invaders. They had seen how the huge herds...

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