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

The Bookcliffs.

Let's talk about the bookcliff mountains a little bit.

The bookcliffs were named by Lt. John W. Gunnison who was surveying a railroad route for the Government.  He thought that they looked like books so that's what he named them.  The bookcliffs extend from near Helper or Castle Gate in Utah to Grand Junction in Colorado.  All four Joseph's lived at or near the bookcliffs.

Joseph the first was one of the early settlers of Woodside, Utah.  The Price River runs right through Woodside and goes through the bookcliffs in an almost box canyon.  It is even call box canyon on some early maps.  Range Creek is to the north and the Elliott Plateau, Mesa or Mountain is to the south as the Lower Price River empties into the Green River north of the town of Green River.  I believe the the Curtis Formation, which is part of the San Rafael Group of geologic formations, is named after Joe because he was one of the first settlers of Woodside.  The Curtis formation is adjacent to the Summerville Formation.  Summerville was also an early settler of Woodside.

There are a couple of stories in this blog associated with Joseph 2nd or Dode.  One is dated April 16, 2011 and has to do with some claims that Dode had north of the Price River in Park Wash which empties into the Price River.  There is also the story of Dode having a wolf attack a young colt in the Park.  The colt later died from it's injuries.  The Park is in the Bookcliffs just above Horse Canyon and near the head of Park Wash

Joseph 3rd, Max, ranched at Woodside in the 1960s and 1970s.  From his ranch you could see the prominent Beckwith Peak, sometimes called Mt. Elliott, which stands out rather majestically.  I will talk about Beckwith Peak in my next blog.

Finally Joseph 4th, Nicholas, me.  I am rather fascinated with rock formations and geographic locations.  I use the name bookcliff for a couple of email addresses and logins for account on the internet.

Below are some pictures of the Price River and Beckwith Peak.  Beckwith Peak is named for Lt. Beckwith who took the place of Lt. Gunnison who was promoted to Captain and later killed by Indians near Delta, Utah on the Sevier River.

This first picture was taken about 1977.  The beaches along the Price River no longer look like this.  In fact there isn't much in the was of beaches anymore along the Price River.  Willow and other plants go right up to the river along the bank on both sides of the river.  This cabin and the trees were taken by floods in the river.  There is usually at least one big flood a year and sometimes three or four time a year.  These floods can and do change the the course of the river and take objects with them.  My dad has lost pumps in these flood when he did not take the suction hose out of the river.  You don't go against Mother Nature.  

This picture was taken about the same time and of course in black and white.  That is alkali rather than snow in the picture.  John Wesley Powell originally named this river the White River because of all the alkali where the it emptied into the Green River.  

 

This is a more modern picture taken just a few years ago.  It was originally posted to this blog in 2008.  This picture was taken on our property, the ranch, near the pond.  Can you see the Kachina?  It is in all three pictures.