HANKSVILLE, Utah — When part of a map is empty, it becomes a magnet for two archetypes of the American West: scientists itching to solve a mystery, and scoundrels looking for a place to disappear. The area around Hanksville, Utah drew iconic examples of each.
My son Luke and our dog Chaco joined me on a trip that would complete a personal trifecta. We'd already explored some of the Robbers Roost area, Canyonlands, and Lake Powell. Now we turned our attention to the Henry Mountains.
We set up camp on the slopes of Mount Hillers, near a piece of land I've heard about since I was a child. Cat Ranch was once owned by my dad's friend Ralph Lowe from Ogden. It's a rare patch of private land in the middle of wilderness. My parents once owned a small piece of it, selling it back when they were about to add an expensive addition to the family. That would be me.
As a matter of fact, I'd been here before, in a sense. Back in 1972, my mom was pregnant with me when she visited. We didn't see any mountain lions, which are the titular cats of the ranch. We did see some deer at a distance, but my ferocious Labrador retriever probably scared away all the bison, because there is a healthy herd of them in the Henrys.
Let's get to those scientists and scoundrels, starting with the scientist: G.K. Gilbert. If there were a Mount Rushmore of American geologists, he'd be on it. He mapped these mountains. He was John Wesley Powell's right-hand man, and his book about the Henry Mountains still stands as an important document for geology in general, not just as a survey of the remote Utah region.
It was in Gilbert's 1877 Report on the geology of the Henry Mountains that the term "Laccolite" was coined. Now called "Laccoliths," the term describes mountains formed by upswelling magma that pushes strata up but doesn't break the surface. It's essentially a volcano that never quite gets around to erupting. Gilbert sketched how volcanic pressure pushes rock layers up without breaking the surface.
Because the mountains formed from similar but distinct seismic events, Gilbert said the mountains aren't really a range — they're more like waves of rock that never crested.
Gilbert's book is also a treasure with personality, complete with detailed directions for traveling from Salt Lake to the Henry Mountains on rented mules. His path opens an enticing, if tangential, possibility: As he traveled through central Utah, he was likely a day's walk from the home of a 10-year-old named Robert LeRoy Parker, who is known in Western lore as Butch Cassidy.
When Cassidy grew in infamy to become our scoundrel, he would adopt the canyons east of the Henry Mountains as his hideout, called the Robbers' Roost.
Before going east to those canyons, we stopped at Stan's Burger Shak in Hanksville for a burger and a milkshake, and we talked with Lee Cartmell, a local with a story more relatable to most of us than Gilbert's or Cassidy's, but with some echoes of both.
Lee loves the area and craves exploring more. He grew up in Loa, the county seat an hour to the west. He grew up a Latter-day Saint and served a mission in North Carolina. After that, he returned to the South, this time Georgia, to live near some family he wanted to get to know. But southern Utah called to him, and he returned after seven years away.
He laughs at the fact that he's a returned missionary with more than 30 tattoos, generally frowned upon in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The tattoos might be rebellious, but they don't make him a scoundrel. The most visible are deeply personal and devoted to his family. On his left forearm is a butterfly representing a skin condition called epidermolysis bullosa. His wife and daughter suffer from the condition that causes skin to easily blister. It's often called "butterfly disease" because of the fragility of a butterfly's wings. His right forearm has a tattoo marking the memory of their first child, lost to stillbirth during a time when they were far from family.
Lee Cartmell's archetype is familiar in the desert Southwest... a person who finds comfort in the solitude and beauty of the land and who finds purpose in the people he loves.
After the nice meal and conversation, we headed east to the (former) land of real outlaws. The names around the area evoke the legends: The Dirty Devil River, Poison Springs Wash, Arsenic Arch, The Witches Cauldron slot canyon, not to mention Robbers' Roost.
I've explored some of these places in the past, but another location intrigued me: Hans Flat Ranger Station. It's on the western edge of Canyonlands National Park and serves visitors to the Maze and Horseshoe Canyon areas of the Park, and it also serves visitors to the adjacent portion of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
Getting to the outpost takes an hour off of pavement, but when you arrive, it's like its own little visitors center. The supervisory ranger, William Leggett, looked and sounded like a younger Sam Elliott. He told us the station is open year-round, with he and his fellow rangers working nine days on and five days off. The station has a phone (don't expect cell reception) and it has the usual selection of pamphlets, books and even national park merch to take home to the family.
Gilbert began his book:
"At the time of their discovery by Professor (John Wesley) Powell the mountains were in the center of the largest unexplored district in the territory of the United States--a district which by its peculiar ruggedness had turned aside all previous travelers."
I don't know about you, but this Westerner thinks that sounds a lot more like an invitation than a warning!
