Reflections and Connections

Casa Colorado, a prominent rock in Dry Valley at the base of the La Sal Mountains, was the location of several natural sandstone watering holes along the Old Spanish Trail. From Piute Springs near the Colorado border to Spanish Valley near Moab, the trail made its way through San Juan County from the 1820s to nearly 1850. Rob Adams photo

Along the Old Spanish Trail

I don’t remember hearing much about “The Old Spanish Trail” (OST) from my history teachers five and a half decades ago, but then I was just a dumb kid daydreaming through life. From the 1600s to the mid-1800s, Spain and Mexico ruled the American Southwest from their settlements along the Rio Grande...

Failed efforts to become a juvenile delinquent

Growing up in Monticello, little boys like me had to work hard to find those unstated, but real, limits of what kinds of misbehavior our parents would allow. We had to travel hundreds of miles and across two or three states to reach big-city gangs full of criminals-in-training to teach us. There...

A historic photo of Pancho Villa on Siete Leguas. Courtesy photo

The heirloom – or its story – which has the greatest value?

Mounted on his horse, Siete Leguas, named for the seven leagues (21 miles) the steed could gallop without a rest, Francisco (Pancho) Villa and his men terrorized both sides of the border as they fired their rifles at anyone who stood in their path. The year was 1910, and the place was Agua Prieta (...

Marguerite and Scotty Rogers. Courtesy photo

The Case of the Missing Eyeball

The manager of the Monticello sewer plant, located just off the second tee box at the old San Juan Golf Course, looked down, jumped back, and felt his heart race. He blinked, blinked again, then refocused for another look. No, he wasn’t going crazy; there was indeed a large, beautiful brown human...

Shep Madera, a member of the Hayden Survey Party that was ambushed in the 1875 Battle of Peters Hill, packing a mule. While 13 members of the survey party escaped, at least one Native American was shot. Photo courtesy American Heritage Museum in Laramie, WY.

Retracing the route of the Battle of Peters Hill, which occurred in August, 1875

by Rob Adams Contributing writer On August 17, 1875, it had been three days since any of the 13 men of the Hayden Survey Party assigned to map southeast Utah had felt the trickle of clear water over their parched tongues. The only thing they’d had to drink was so alkaline or muddy that they could...

Four massive government surveys covered the West after the Civil War, with the Hayden and Powell surveys covering the rugged redrock country of southeastern Utah. Courtesy photo

The Hayden Survey of 1875

The camp must have resembled a hastily thrown-together ranch rodeo just outside of Denver. A choking dust cloud, complete with the sweet and fruity aroma of horse manure, hung over a remuda of 90 mules with one or two horses added, to give the wild bunch a level of sophistication it didn’t deserve...

Norm Nevills, Elzada Clover, and Kolb on the way home after a remarkable adventure on the Green and Colorado rivers in the summer of 1938. Bill Gibson photo, courtesy Northern Arizona University

Into the belly of the beast... Nevills expedition

(This is the last of a three-part story. The first two are in the October 1 and 15 issues of the San Juan Record.) Bill Gibson, the crew’s official photographer, screamed, “There goes the Mexican Hat!” They all froze in their tracks, just in time to see the empty boat gracefully navigate the first...

Don Harris, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter on the river during the inaugural Cataract Canyon trip with Norman Nevills in 1938. See more photos of the trip at the San Juan Record website at sjrnews.com. Courtesy photo

Into the wild river at last

Predictions of calamity, misfortune, and death were the order of the day on the morning of June 20, 1938. Green River, Utah, population 500, was abuzz with activity due to a recent article in the Saturday Evening Post mentioning the sleepy whistle-stop town. A mob of over 100 national, regional,...

Norman Nevills, The Great San Juan Adventurer

Though he died five years before I was born, I remember hearing about Norman Nevills since I was a child. I heard him called The Great San Juan Adventurer. He was a river runner, a backcountry guide, a pilot, and passionate about his newfound home. Nevills was born in California in 1908, with an...

The life of a cropduster is full of adventure, monotony.... and danger. Courtesy art

Respect for the fragility of life...

7:42 am 25 July 1970 It’s been more than 55 years since I attended a masonic funeral. The service was simple, appropriate, and lasted less than half an hour. I don’t remember many details, only the simple urn bearing the remains of the man whose life we were honoring, but etched indelibly on the...