Desolation Canyon History | Outlaws, Ranchers & Pioneers on the Green River
Desolation Canyon Deep Dive
History: Outlaws, Ranchers & Pioneers
From Powell's 1869 expedition to Butch Cassidy's hideouts: the wild and wonderful history of the Green River wilderness
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Powell and the Great Unknown
"After dinner we pass through a region of the wildest desolation." -- Major John Wesley Powell, 1869
The year 1869 saw the first complete traverse of the Green and Colorado river canyons between Green River, Wyoming, and the mouth of the Grand Canyon. Major Powell planned and captained the ten-man expedition, emphasizing the study of geology, geography, and natural history. Powell's reports and his crews' journals offered the first recorded descriptions of Desolation and Gray Canyons. In 1969, these canyons were designated a National Historic Landmark in recognition of Powell's contributions to science.
Powell wasn't the first non-native to see these canyons, though. Mountain men trapped the Green for beaver between 1820 and 1840. In 1825, General William Ashley led the first recorded boat trip on the Green between Wyoming and the lower Uinta Basin. And the 1853 Pacific Railroad Survey headed by Captain John W. Gunnison forded the Green near the present site of Green River, Utah. Gunnison and half his party were massacred by Pahvant Utes soon afterward.
Historical Sites on the River
You'll float past these stories. Here's what happened where.
Trip Mile 50 · Belknap Mile 47 · River Left
Denis Julien Inscription (1830s)
French trapper Denis Julien, a St. Louis trading post owner and prosperous fur trapper originally from New Orleans, left inscriptions from the Uinta Basin to Cataract Canyon in the 1830s, nearly half a century before Powell. He probably pecked his initials at Chandler Creek. The inscription is visible from the river on river left near Chandler Canyon.
Trip Mile 44 · Belknap Mile 53 · River Right
Rock Creek Ranch (Seamont Brothers, early 1900s)
Brothers Dan and Bill Seamont built Rock Creek Ranch in the early 1900s. They packed supplies down Steer Ridge Canyon in summer and up river trails from Woodside in winter. The historic workshop, built from hand-hewn timbers, houses relics of the pioneer past and is the favorite stop on the river for most groups. The ranch is private property: look and photograph but leave everything untouched.
Trip Mile 57 · Belknap Mile 39.5 · River Left
McPherson Ranch (1890s-1940s)
Jim McPherson settled at Florence Creek about 1890 and raised his family in the canyon. He often befriended Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch when they needed grub or fresh horses. Jim and his wife Tora raised four daughters and a son. Their son-in-law Budge Wilcox and daughter Pearl eventually bought the ranch, then sold it in the 1940s when the Ute Indian Reservation expanded. The Ute Tribe has since constructed buildings at the site. The hewn stone walls of the original ranch house are still visible from the river.
Trip Mile 58 · Belknap Mile 39 · Near Florence Creek
Joe Walker: Outlaw Killed in His Bedroll (1898)
A posse tracked Wild Bunch compadre Joe Walker to a camp near Florence Creek and shot him in his bedroll on Friday the 13th, May 1898. Walker had been involved in multiple robberies with the Cassidy gang.
Trip Mile 71 · Belknap Mile 26 · Coal Creek
"Flat Nose" George Curry: Shot by the River (1900)
Lawmen shot outlaw George "Flat Nose" Curry beside the river on April 17, 1900. Two canyons and a rapid in Gray Canyon carry his name. Curry was a member of Cassidy's Wild Bunch and had a reputation as a skilled horse thief.
Upper Desolation · Belknap Mile 92 · Near Sand Wash
Preston Nutter: Utah's Last Great Cattle King
Cattleman Preston Nutter controlled most of the West Tavaputs Plateau, from the Uinta Basin to Range Creek, as well as half of the Arizona Strip, and ran more cattle than any other rancher in Utah. Tall and hard, he always rode a mule and befriended Indian and outlaw alike. He knew everyone along the river, from Red Moon to Butch Cassidy. Nutters Hole, in upper Desolation, was his hay ranch. When he died in 1936, the Salt Lake Tribune called him Utah's last great cattle king.
The Ute Indians of Desolation Canyon
Three bands who roamed freely in Colorado and Utah before being confined to the reservation.
Desolation Canyon's Ute Indians consisted mainly of three bands: the Uintah, Uncompahgre, and White River. Primarily hunters, their mobility increased greatly when the Spanish introduced horses around 1700. Tribes of Ute Indians occupied the Uinta Basin in 1776 when the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition crossed the Green River near Split Mountain.
White settlers crowded the Uintah band into less desirable areas, triggering local wars. The band was eventually moved to the Uintah Valley Reservation created by Congress in 1865. After a violent incident at the White River Agency in Colorado in 1879, the entire White River and Uncompahgre bands were forced from their Colorado homeland and placed on a reservation adjacent to the Uintah Utes, consolidated as the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in 1886.
Land on the east side of the river between Ouray and Coal Creek still belongs to the Ute Tribe. As of September 2018, all activities on Ute Tribal lands are prohibited without express permission. Chief Ouray and his wife Chipeta are remembered for their efforts to negotiate peace between whites and Utes. President Rutherford Hayes once described Ouray as the most intellectual man he had ever conversed with.
Dam Builders, Coal Miners & Failed Schemes
Man has not yet seriously altered these canyons, but it hasn't been for lack of trying. In 1907, Denver capitalists proposed to Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt a plan to make the river navigable from Ouray to the railroad at Green River by removing the rocks from the sixty rapids. The proposal was never carried out.
Dam promoters have longed to tame the Green. When the Kolb brothers rowed through Gray Canyon in 1911, they found a crew working at Coal Creek Rapid on a project called Buell Dam, which was never finished. Later USGS survey parties reported favorably on several potential dam sites.
Julius Stone, boating the canyons in 1909, noted coal seams in the Mesaverde sandstone of Gray Canyon. The region's oil shale and natural gas deposits continue to raise questions about the canyon's future. Desolation Canyon is designated a Wilderness Study Area, affording it some BLM protection, but permanent wilderness status awaits an act of Congress.
Read the Full Stories on the River
Belknap's Desolation River Guide includes the complete history section with the McPherson Ranch family album (rare 1890s-1930s photographs), Powell Report excerpts placed at the exact river miles where events occurred, Ute Indian history, Denis Julien inscription locations, and outlaw stories told alongside the topographic maps.
Get Belknap's Desolation River Guide →History content from Belknap's Desolation River Guide by Loie Belknap Evans. McPherson Ranch photos courtesy Jim and Nellie McPherson, Budge and Pearl Wilcox. Published by Westwater Books, Evergreen, Colorado.