Sunday, May 18, 2008

A Pair of Cassidy Articles

An Encounter With Butch Cassidy and His Gang

The history of the settlement of the West is full of names like Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, and Miles Goodyear. History tells one story about them and legend often quite another. In his book, "The Forgotten Founders," Stewart Udall is at some pains to show that the West was settled by "wagon people who came, camped, settled and stayed," people who were brave and hardy and who raised families and established towns and cities and schools and churches.

The Hollywood and pulp magazine characters of the Old West quite generally had a smaller existence in actual history. And their impact, was more often than not an impediment to the development of the West and certainly to the lives of law-abiding settlers. The historical Jim Bridger, for example, was known as a scoundrel, a cheater and an indolent gone native. He and those who gathered at his establishment in Wyoming are described by men of credibility as drunken, disorderly sorts who had so lost the manners and enterprise of ordinary citizens that they had no way of fitting in among civilized people.

Butch Cassidy came from a pioneer family, probably sent to southern Utah as part of Brigham Young's colonization scheme, but at a fairly early age, he seems to have had enough of "hard scrabble" and left for a easier life, commendable if that led him to praiseworthy accomplishments, but sad if it led downward. A report by a rancher in southern Utah tells of an encounter with someone possibly in the latter category: "We came suddenly upon the wildest-looking derelict I think I have ever seen. He was quite obviously lost and desperate with fear and hunger. His clothing was soiled with the ashes and grime of many camp fires, and his restless eyes were bloodshot from watching -- so I judged -- the horizons. The sharp lines of his hollow, unwashed cheeks were hidden by several weeks of dusty beard. - Daily Herald

Retracing Butch Cassidy's Steps

It is easiest to see the wild, isolated Robbers Roost country -- where Butch Cassidy often hid out -- from Angel Point, overlooking the Dirty Devil River.

A dirt loop road leads here from Utah 95, about five miles south of Hanksville. There are occasional signposts and a small parking lot at the trail head. The hike to the river is about three miles; the views of the Roost's deeply incised canyons get better all the way. In low-water conditions, hikers can ford the Dirty Devil and continue to Angel Cove Spring and, finally, to Biddlecome-Ekker Ranch.

For information, stop in at the Bureau of Land Management office in Hanksville, 435-542-3461.

Beaver, the county seat on Interstate 15 about 100 miles north of St. George, is where Robert LeRoy Parker, aka Butch Cassidy, was born April 13, 1866, three years before the completion of the nation's first transcontinental railroad. When he was 13, the family moved across 11,331-foot Circleville Mountain to a ranch in the Sevier River Valley.

Today, there's little left of Butch in Beaver besides a much transformed, unmarked pink stone house where he is thought to have lived and a Best Western hotel named for him. But while you're there, don't miss the Cache Valley Cheese factory and store, 330 W. 300 South; the place is known for cheese curds that squeak when you bite into them. Parowan, also on I-15, about 30 miles south of Beaver, was the first Mormon colony south of Provo, settled in the early 1850s at the behest of church leader Brigham Young. Many pioneers are buried in its rock-walled cemetery under the mountains on the west side of town, as is Daniel Parker, Butch's younger brother. - Star-Telegram

Tags: Butch Cassidy

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