Junction US 40—Sunbeam—Greystone—Lodore Canyon Camp; 58.7 miles, State 318.

Unimproved dirt road, often impassible; inquire about conditions at Sun-beam. Accommodations limited.              

This tour traverses a far northwestern corner of Colorado to Yampa Canyon of the Yampa River and Lodore Canyon of the Green, two of America's great river gorges. Although remote from good highways and little known except to explorers, parts of both canyons are accessible by motor and pack train, provided the visitor is accustomed to roughing it and is properly equipped. The canyons are within the Dinosaur National Monument (see Utah Guide), which was enlarged in 1938 to include 177,280 acres in Colorado.

State 318, a dirt road, branches northwest from US 40 (see Tour 7c), 0 miles, 74.5 miles west of Craig (see Tour 7c).

Northwest of SUNBEAM, 7.3 miles (6,000 alt., 11 pop.), the route traverses rolling mountain country covered with sage and rent by deep dry gullies, crossing LITTLE SNAKE RIVER, 21.3 miles, a tributary of the Yampa. Near the Wyoming Line, headwaters of this stream, Jim Baker, early western scout, once had his cabin.

At 39.9 miles is the junction with a dirt road.

Left on this road (high centers) to FIVE SPRINGS RANCH, 13 miles (accommodations; horses $3 daily; guides $5 daily). The houses and barns of peeled cedar logs are sheltered in a hollow near the crest of DOUGLAS MOUNTAIN, also known as the Escalante Hills, a sandstone ridge marking the eastern extension of the Uinta Mountains of Utah.

Left from Five Springs Ranch by an unmarked horse trail to WARM SPRINGS DRAW, 7 miles (do not attempt without guides). Here in YAMPA CANYON, part of the Douglas State Game Refuge, deer and elk are numerous and tame; bear and mountain lion are occasionally seen. Unlike gloomy Lodore Canyon (see below), Yampa Canyon is gay and sunny throughout most of its length, the light bringing out its vivid coloring. The canyon is U-shaped, with imposing walls 1,000 to 1,600 feet high, almost vertical, and with few ledges and practically no vegetation. To the south a series of broad benches rise to the Yampa Plateau; to the north is Douglas Mountain. Bones, corn grinders, awls, and other artifacts found in the canyon lead archeologists to believe the country was once inhabited by a Pueblo people.

Right from Warm Springs Draw down the canyon to PAT'S HOLE, 14 miles, at the confluence of the Yampa and Green Rivers; here the canyon suddenly broadens into a rectangular mile-square area, surrounded by high unbroken walls except where the rivers and Pool Creek enter. At the exit of the Green River at the western side of the Hole rises the great sandstone mass known as STEAMBOAT ROCK, the sheer face of which has never been scaled. The sides of Steamboat Rock and the walls encircling Pat's Hole provide excellent sounding boards; in certain places four distinct echoes can be heard. First named Echo Park by Major John Wesley Powell (see below), who descended the Green River in 1869, its present name honors Pat Lynch, who lived here hermit-like for years before others settled in the vicinity. Lynch had a pet mountain lion named Jenny Lind. Though no one ever saw the animal, Pat frequently demonstrated her presence to visitors by shouting "Jenny" at a rock and being answered with a roar. After the reverberations had ceased, Pat always remarked, "Jenny Lind never sang a sweeter note." The floor of Pat's Hole is covered with cedar, grass, and sagebrush, tall as a man on horseback. The grass here often remains green until January.

Right from Pat's Hole up Lodore Canyon (see below) to the lower end of HELL'S HALF MILE, 5 miles, a stretch of rapids where the Green River churns its way among huge boulders. Horses must be used, for the river is forded ten times, and the rapids are too swift and treacherous for a man on foot. Those wishing to see more of Hell's Half Mile must proceed on foot along the narrow ledges high on the canyon walls (difficult and not recommended; upper Lodore Canyon is not accessible from the eastern or Douglas Mountain rim).

GREYSTONE, 40.9 miles (6,500 alt., 75 pop.), consists of a general store and post office, with gasoline, food supplies, and limited overnight accommodations (inquire about condition of roads).

Northwest of Greystone the narrow rough dirt road, impassable in wet weather, winds through hilly country, crossing the eastern boundary of DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT, 57.6 miles, originally created in northeastern Utah in 1915 but enlarged by presidential proclamation in 1938 to include 26,605 acres in Utah and 177,280 in Colorado. Although only partly explored as yet, the rich fossil beds throughout the monument are of the greatest scientific interest.

LODORE CANYON CAMP, 58.7 miles (limited summer accommodations; boats and guides), is situated near a spring on the eastern side of the Green River at the mouth of Lodore Canyon. The canyon begins at the eastern end of BROWN'S PARK, also known as Brown's Hole, an almost level valley 30 miles long and 5 miles wide, lying in both Colorado and Utah. Known to white men for a century, the park became a rendezvous for the Mountain Men about 1830, when Baptiste Brown, a French-Canadian fur trader, settled here. A one-story trading post of mud and cottonwood logs, named Fort Davy Crockett, was built in 1837 by Philip Thompson and William Craig on the north bank of the Green River above the mouth of the canyon. This post never prospered and was known among the trappers as Fort Misery.

When Dr. F. A. Wislizenus of Germany, author of A Journey to the Rocky Mountains in 1839, visited the post, he found its hungry inhabitants contentedly eating a lean dog they had purchased the day before. Wislizenus found the dog meat was not so bad. Fort Davy Crockett was abandoned about 1840, and the Mountain Men and their Indian squaws departed.

A frontier atmosphere still pervades the park. Many ranches are scattered along its length, but it is too barren and remote from markets to attract settlers. For this reason it was once a favorite haunt of outlaws, the best known of whom was Butch Cassidy (George LeRoy Parker), leader of the Wild Bunch. A stocky good-natured man with a hearty smile, Cassidy grew up much as any young Utah cowboy of the 1880's; by the time he crossed into Wyoming in 1889, he had done some cattle rustling; knew the secret places of the Uncompahgre and of Brown's Park, and the trails along the "high lines" that commanded a view of the country across which "the law" must ride.

Cassidy was arrested in Wyoming for stealing horses in the spring of 1894, but received a pardon two years later upon his promise "not to worry Wyoming." He was too honest to promise to reform entirely, but he kept his word in this matter. Thereafter the tousled-haired cowboy, whom few men could help but like, went from bad to worse. He became an outlaw, together with Logan, Harney, Lovie, Longabough, Curry, and Camella Hanks, and was their acknowledged leader. Among other crimes, he is said to have participated in the robbery of a bank at Montpelier, Idaho, where several thousands of dollars were taken; a payroll robbery in broad daylight at Castlegate, Utah; the robbery of a train at Wagner, Mont, where the loot amounted to more than $100,000 in unsigned currency; and the robbery of a bank at Winnemucca, Nev., of more than $20,000.

Soon after the beginning of the century the Wild Bunch was broken up, and Cassidy was forced to flee the country, along with Longabough. According to reports, the two men died in 1904, near the Argentine-Chile border when surrounded by Chilean soldiers who suspected them of cattle rustling. Longabough was killed; Cassidy fought alone through the night and finally put a bullet through his head. The soldiers shot in this encounter are said to have been the only men he ever killed.

Left from the camp is a three-mile boat trip through the upper part of LODORE CANYON (16-foot boats with outboard motors, carrying up to four passengers; $3.00). The voyage stops short of Disaster Falls, which, with Triplet Falls and Hell's Half Mile (see above), are the most dangerous rapids. The 17-mile gorge begins a short distance below the mouth of Vermillion Creek and terminates at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers. Within this distance the river drops an average of 15 feet a mile. The northern approach to the canyon, where the Green River eats its way into and through a spur of the Uinta Mountains, is spectacular in the extreme. Visible for miles, the great red sandstone cliffs at the canyon entrance rise a sheer 2,000 feet and were named the Gate of Lodore by Major John Wesley Powell, who on his many geological surveys in the West twice "shot" the gorge, in 1869 and 1871. He took the name from Southey's poem "How the Waters Come Down at Lodore," which he was fond of reciting as he journeyed down the river. Disaster Falls, as most physical features of the canyon, was named by him when one of his boats, the No-Name, was wrecked there on his first voyage.

The canyon cuts directly through the Uinta Range, one of the few ranges in the United States that run in an east-west direction. Pointing out that the normal course of the river would be around the mountains, Powell explained that "the river had the right of way. In other words, it was running ere the mountains were formed; not before the rock of which the mountains are composed were deposited, but before the formations were folded, so as to make a mountain range." Powell believed that the fold or ridge rose slowly, permitting the river to keep its original channel and cut it in two.

Within the gate Lodore Canyon is wild and impressive with its dark red cedar-studded cliffs rising far overhead. Of this first section General William Henry Ashley wrote in 1825: "As we passed along between these massive walls, which in a great degree excluded from us the rays of heaven and presented a surface as impassible as their body was impregnable, I was forcibly struck with the gloom which spread over the countenances of my men; they seemed to anticipate a dreadful termination of our voyage." Ashley, a former lieutenant-governor of Missouri, became known as General Ashley on his second fur trading expedition west from St. Louis in 1823, when he joined soldiers in quelling a war party of Indians. While on his third expedition in 1824-25, he painted his name on a huge rock on the eastern wall of the canyon here near a 10-foot cascade, now known as Ashley Falls; the lettering was discernible as late as 1911.

The next authenticated shooting of the rapids was by William L. Manley, who, with six companions, grew tired of the dusty Overland Trail to California during the gold rush of '49 and set out down the river in an old flat-bottomed boat. Their venture came to grief at Ashley Falls, but the men hewed two canoes from logs and reached the Uinta Basin in safety. Here they were persuaded by friendly Indians to give up the perilous river trip and resume their overland march.

Perhaps the most notable shooting of the rapids was the single-handed exploit of Haldane (Buzz) Holmstrom in October 1937, when he safely navigated a home-made boat down the Green and Colorado Rivers from Green River, Wyo., to Lake Mead, at Boulder Dam, in the far corner of Nevada and Arizona.