Railway bed going to Sego...
Railway bed going to Sego.
After a few weeks of thinking about the money and maybe even worrying that someone else was spending it, Cassidy's Wild Bunch saddled up and headed north. They used the crossing at Green River and probably even rode through town in defiance of the lawmen there. After the crossing, they rode to Thompson Canyon and used an Indian trail to reach the top of the Book Cliffs. Once on top, they cut across lands now within the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. They passed through the town of Ouray, then through Vernal, and finally used the Grouse Canyon access into Browns Hole. No doubt they stopped at Jarvie's Outpost at the edge of Brown's Hole to get the latest news. That trip took five days on horseback.
For this trip, we decided to begin in Green River. It is a quiet community located at a point where the Green River can most easily be crossed for hundreds of miles in either direction. When the Wild Bunch passed through, it had already boomed once with the arrival of the railroad and had declined when the railroad moved its operations to another city. Even with that decline, it thrived as a river-crossing town.
There were other boom years centered around mining and oil, but one boom few people are aware of came in the 1960s. Green River became the base for the White Sands Missile Range annex. More than 100 missiles were fired from this range during the development of long-range nuclear weapons. The old bunkers are especially alluring, but watch for rattlesnakes hiding in the shadows.
After getting the necessary gas and supplies, we headed northeast and climbed onto a shelf road high into the Book Cliffs. That shelf road took us to Thompson Canyon.
The route used by the Wild Bunch has been closed to motorized vehicles at the boundary for the Indian Reservation. A horse trail is still open at the top of the Book Cliffs, but we have not explored it.
At the point where Thompson Canyon and Sego Canyon connect, we stopped to study the rock art on both walls of the canyon. One of us is still convinced the drawings are nothing more significant than a child's doodles on scrap paper. Of course that is an uneducated opinion which is shared by no one we know of.
There was nothing of importance in Thompson Canyon when the Wild Bunch passed through; however, a man by the name of Harry Ballard had already discovered huge coal deposits in Sego Canyon and had purchased the land around that claim. Ballard tried to make his discovery profitable but was not successful. He finally sold the mine to investors who had big plans for Sego. A company store, boarding house, and other necessary buildings were constructed. Unfortunately, one very important factor had been overlooked. The water level in the wells was dropping quickly and the more workers that moved in only hastened that decline. The only way to keep the wells full was to haul it in from elsewhere.
Even so, the mine continued to be worked until 1947. There are numerous buildings still standing, including the stone-walled store and the huge wooden boarding house. The boarding house looks like it was blown apart with dynamite, but much of it is still standing. The graveyard has been maintained to some extent.
We had some fun at Sego. We strapped on our irons and took a series of photos for our outlaw scrapbooks. Sego is far enough away from civilization to let the imagination go wild.
Since crossing the Indian reservation is not allowed, we decided to skirt the east side of it. The most fun way to do that is to climb back onto the shelf road in the Book Cliffs and follow it east until it drops into Sagers Canyon. From there, the route crosses the flats using roads through oil fields and nearly connects to Interstate 70 before turning back to the north and entering the Campbell Ranch at Diamond Canyon.