Fire and the loss of Scorup’s Cabin

On June 27, in Washington City, UT, I received a text from a friend in Illinois: “How is the Babylon fire affecting you? (Besides breaking your heart.)”
She sent a series of photos showing huge plumes of smoke rising from Elk Ridge, one looking like an atomic bomb had gone off.
Our son in Missouri texted: “Are you in danger from the wildfires?”
Finally, from a Blanding friend: “Last night it looked so bad that I put a 72-hour kit of essentials in my car.”
We’d just finished celebrating our granddaughter’s fairytale wedding at the Washington Barn.
We’d been so busy helping with preparations and enjoying the revelry we hadn’t checked the news or our messages, so I had no idea a fire had started the day before near Babylon Pasture. I was positive it would be out by the time we made the trip home on Monday.
It wasn’t.
Once we passed Dennehotso, we could see multiple columns of smoke rising from Elk Ridge. By the next day, June 30, the fire had scorched 48,258 acres and consumed the Poso Cabin, King Edward’s Mine Cabin, and the Scorup Cabin with zero containment.
My heart sank at the news of the Scorup Cabin’s loss. An historic icon, it held special memories for many in our county, including me.
Seven years before Ted and I married, my big brother, a Kansas City photographer, my best friend, and I hiked into Dark Canyon. It was my first time, and I’d been leery about making the trip because the canyon sounded foreboding.
I pictured craggy walls, shadows thick along the bottom, and stunted junipers, pinions, and cacti. Besides, my brother, who had backpacked in a few years earlier, claimed he’d thrown everything non-essential out of his pack as he’d struggled back up the steep slope at the end of his trip. Despite my hesitation, plans were set, and we were going in.
A heavy frost blanketed our windshields and coated the trees and grass that Monday morning on June 7th.
My friend and her husband ran cattle on the TY range which included Dark Canyon, so her husband and brother offered to pack all our supplies in and out on horses. All we had to do was get ourselves down into the canyon, survive the five-day adventure, and hike out.
The trek into the canyon on the Forest Service trail was easy, even though we dropped 1,500 feet until we reached Horse Pasture.
Then, the canyon opened up, and we walked to Scorup’s Cabin.
After we had settled in that night, I wrote in my journal: “This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The cliffs are white with irregular shapes, hoodoos, domes, and pinnacles. The bottom is marshy with lush vegetation making it humpy to walk across, and we had to cross a stream a million times.
“Gorgeous ponderosas, firs, and red and shag-barked junipers grow in the meadows, and waterfalls cascade over the rocks.”
And then there was Scorup’s Cabin, used as a cowboy camp through the 1970’s and probably later. After that, the Forest Service preserved it for its rich history as a basecamp for one of the largest cattle companies in our region.
John Albert Scorup wanted to be a rancher from the time he was little, according to Neal Lambert in his 1964 Utah Historical article, “Al Scorup: Cattleman of the Canyons.”
Al started cowboying in our neck of the desert in 1891 when he was 19, hired by Claude Sanford to round up feral cattle in White Canyon with the promise he’d be paid one-third of the calves.
Later that year, Al convinced his brother Jim to throw in with him. In those early days they experienced ups and downs with their herd as well as thirst, hunger, heat, cold, and brutally hard work, but they stuck with it for 27 years, gradually amassing thousands of cattle identified by the Lazy TY brand.
In 1918, Al, Bill Somerville, and his brother Andrew, with Al signing Jim’s name on the contract, bought the Indian Creek Cattle Company.
Tragically, Jim died a short time later from pneumonia. To compound the trouble, it was one of the harshest winters on record, and nearly 2,000 of their cattle died from starvation. Al said it was the worst year of his life, but somehow, he kept plugging away.
In 1926, Al, the Somervilles, and Jacob Adams created the Scorup-Somerville Cattle Company, making Dugout Ranch, which they’d purchased in 1918, their headquarters.
Eventually, they ran between 7,000 and 10,000 cows across 1.8 and 2 million acres.
Like so many others, I was enchanted with two-room cabin in Dark Canyon. It was well preserved with handmade wooden furniture, pots and pans, tools, coffee tins, pewter silverware, and tin plates. We even used the 1881 woodburning stove to cook our dinners.
Now it’s gone, and as I write this, the fire has burned nearly 103,000 acres with 21% containment. Last night, as we left Monticello, ash fell from the sky, and we could see the flames on Blue Mountain even from Blanding.
I’ll admit I’ve wept over the deaths of the firefighters in Colorado, as well as the exhaustion and courage of those fighting here.
I’ve mourned the loss of forests, wildlife, and historic structures, yet friends keep pointing me to a higher perspective.
One sent a video that her son took on July 8 of a ten-minute rain in Monticello and a complete, perfect rainbow arching over Blue Mountain.
Another believes our land and its diverse people are being prepared for a spiritual rebirth. Certainly, no matter our faith, tradition, or politics, we’re uniting our pleas to the Creator for rains to cool and bless our land of red rocks, dark canyons, and blue mountains.