Aunt Jody Wood: Angel of mercy
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN
by Buckley Jensen
In the early days of San Juan, medical doctors and medicines were rarely available in times of need.
That fact made living on the frontier even more difficult. Child mortality, women dying in childbirth, death from...
Walter C. Lyman: Father of Blanding
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN
by Buckley Jensen
Early on the morning of September 24, 1887, Walter C. Lyman was riding his horse toward White Mesa from Bluff.
He writes, “I climbed up over the south rim of the mesa just as the sun peeped above the horizon....
Charles Steen – Uranium King of San Juan
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN
by Buckley Jensen
Charlie Steen was an enigma. He came into San Juan in the l950’s, dirt poor, lived in a tar-paper shack with his wife and four little boys and discovered the fabled Mi-Vida Uranium Mine in the Big Indian...
LaVerda Barton Jensen – Beloved teacher
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN
by Buckley Jensen
“I have been a school supervisor, a principal, and a superintendent for 25 or more years and I say without hesitation that, never in all those years have I seen or become acquainted with, a more excellent and...
Young’s Buggies at 57 years
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN
by Buckley Jensen
In 1953, when the first uranium boom was in its infancy, Clyn P. Young of Monticello decided to try to make “mucking” (getting the blasted ore out) mines easier. Up until then, mining uranium was a matter of wheeling ore...
Clarence Frost: Exemplary life, untimely death
GIANTS OF SAN
by Buckley Jensen
Clarence Frost lived an exemplary life and suffered an untimely death when he fell off the roof of his lodge at the Blue Mountain Guest Ranch. His was a life of constant struggle. The adversity that he...
William Riley Hurst, a colorful giant of San Juan
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN
by Buckley Jensen
William Riley Hurst was born in the Mormon Colonies of Old Mexico in l908.
In l910, When Riley was two and a half years old, the family was driven out of Mexico by Poncho Villa’s forces during the...
The audacious Charlie Redd
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN
by Buckley Jensen
Trying to encapsulate the life of Charlie Redd on a single newspaper page is like trying to capture a tornado in a tube. With advance apologies to Charlie, what follows is a thimble-sized summation of his remarkable life...
Leland W. Redd and The Last Indian War
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN
by Buckley Jensen
This true story leaps off the page like a John Ford Western. In 1923, the last shooting battle between Indians and white settlers in the United States was fought in San Juan County. Combatants were killed,...
Remarkable life from humble start
GIANTS OF SAN JUAN
by Buckley Jensen
The story is told of the member of an Indian tribe trying to describe to a friend the kind of man their chief was. The best explanation he could give was, “he makes many, many, many tracks.” That analogy will be...
