Now I Hunt Treasure and Research Outlaws.

My baseball story.

When I was young I fell in love with baseball.  Both playing sandlot baseball and following Major League Baseball.  My favorite player was Ted Williams.  It seemed everyone liked the Yankees and Mickey Mantle, so I became a Boston Red Sox fan.  That was about 1959.  I am still a very loyal fan of the Red Sox.  I even have Mookie Mania.

I didn't get to play Little League Baseball.  My mother had me go to church, primary, which conflicted with team tryouts so I didn't get on a team.  I could only watch others play.  I watched older guys play baseball in the Pony League too.  The Pony League was for 13-14 year olds in that area.  I got on a team in the Pony League as they didn't require tryouts.  I was in like my first or second game when my dad bought a car and came and took me out of the game.  I felt like he could have shown me his new car anytime.

But that wasn't all.  He wanted me to start going down to his ranch and farm at Woodside, Utah.  So much for my baseball career.  Woodside was, and still is in a way, outlaw territory.  My dad used to talk about Joe Walker and the Walker Trail all the time.  I even have a couple of stories about Butch Cassidy and my family.

My father also used to have a lot of mining claims.  His father had a lot of mining claims and even his father had at least one mining claim.  I have discussed Dode's mining claims in other posts on this blog.  So that gave me an interest in mining, prospecting and somehow treasure hunting.  I have read all the treasure stories about Utah that I could.  I have even researched treasure stories in all states in the west.

I currently have some active treasure hunts going on and I have joined GPAA so I can go prospecting, panning, detecting or whatever on their claims.  I still love baseball.  My dream is to hit the ball out of Spring Mobile Ballpark, which is the home of the Salt Lake Bees.  This at age 70.  I may not be able to do it but I would sure love the chance.

Another wish list item is to find a 6 pound gold nugget in California or Oregon.
Nicholas

Nash Draw in the Bookcliffs.

Max begins herding sheep 

The story goes that my dad, Max, went to work herding sheep when he was about 13.  That is when he left school.  Must have been just after the 8th grade.  The school at Woodside must have burned down about that time because he used to joke that they had to burn down the school to get him out of the 8th grade.  He told me this many times.

I guess I never knew where he went to herd sheep at this time.  I thought that he went to Elliott Mesa. My brother Leon told me that he went to the Bookcliffs east of the Green River.  A large part of this area is now part of the Uintah-Ouray Indian Reservation.  They did not always get crummy land. The Bookcliffs here are very beautiful.  It is remote and hard to get to but it is beautiful.  I spent a couple of summers there working for the Utah State Forest Service in the 1970s.

Before it was part of the Reservation it was cattle county and outlaw country.  At least three outlaws met their demise at or near these Bookcliffs.  Joe Walker and Johnny Herring were killed by a posse. Flatnose George Curry was also killed near there along the Green River.  George was a big trophy for the posse.  He was the leader of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang at one time.  He had also just recently participated in the Wilcox Train Robbery.

This was also the domain of the Webster City Cattle Company.  This cattle company was owned by some men from Webster City, Iowa.  There was no Webster City in Utah.  There was a headquarters for the ranch but it was not called Webster City.

Leon told me that about 1957 they went hunting at Nash Draw on a late deer hunt.  Dad was somewhat familiar with the area because he had herded sheep there as a young man.  That's the area he went to when he started out at 14 years of age.  I went with my dad on a deer hunt there a few years later. Probably about 1962.  I love this area and think about it often.  It has a deep and special meaning to me to know that my father and I had been in the same area though at different times and under different circumstances.

I don't know the exact areas where he was but I spent a bit of time on Hill Creek and even met William Cunningham at his ranch in Bogart Canyon.  I believe this was the headquarters for the Webster City Cattle Company.  It fits the descriptions from some of the newspaper articles that I have read.  It seems like Bill Cunningham even said that there used to be a lot of buildings there.  Buildings like bunkhouses for the cowboys. quarters for families, hotel, saloon, school and maybe even a church.

I have other stories that I will post at some future times.  My dad met my mother at Clear Creek when he was herding sheep.  I was deer hunting with him on a late hunt near Scofield.  He spent a month on the Elliott Plateau without seeing another human being.
Nicholas