GROUSE CREEK, Utah — As the crow flies, Grouse Creek is 120 miles from downtown Salt Lake City, but on the ground, it's more than 200. The fastest route takes travelers through Nevada, with the last stretch made up of gravel.
In 1920, the census counted 342 residents of Grouse Creek. Today, that number shows 93 people living in the local zip code. Among them are four members of the Warr family, including Kobie.
This year, Kobie was the Fourth of July Rodeo princess, and around here, tiara's fit on a cowgirl's hat. And Kobie is a cowgirl.
On my visit, Kobie and her dad, Mason, were tracking down some stragglers from their herd. As they went along, several of the Warr family's ranch dogs, a cute collection of cattle dogs and corgis, joined the team.
Mason and Kobie made quick work of bringing in the cows.
While Kobie and her dad are good work partners, so are she and her mom, Jess, who makes custom leather belts, chaps and saddles in their home.
"So I have a swivel knife, You just do it with that," Jess explained when asked how she creates her designs. "...a lot of them by hand, I'll hand draw, and then I'll trace them on."
I walked away with a Kobie Warr original: a yellow leather key chain with a red cow painted on it. With my new favorite key chain, I left the Warr's ranch and stopped briefly at a historical touchstone in the valley.
The original one-room schoolhouse where the Grouse Creek kids used to attend was built with available local stone and dates back to the 1800s.
Today's school is a few miles away in what you might call "downtown" Grouse Creek.
Kobie's teacher, Jill Dallon, is every actually student's teacher at the Grouse Creek school. She has nine students this year, up from five year.
Dallon admits that teaching in a one-room school was not what she had in mind during her own studies.
"No, of course not," she said. "Never crossed my mind. Never came up for conversation."
While I was at the school, four students, nearly half the student body, were in the cafeteria eating Ms. Joanne's pizza and ice cream treats.
"[Jill Dallon] is quite confident and dynamic," said Heidi Jo West, the Asst. Superintendent for the Box Elder School District. "Really likes to draw people in and can have an engaging conversation."
West knows the kinds of students in Grouse Creek as she once taught in a tiny private school herself.
"I could definitely be sympathetic to the situation that they find themselves in," she said. "But the reality is, what they're doing is complex and new, because education evolves so quickly."
Melissa Morris is the principal of the Grouse Creek school, as well as schools in Park Valley and Snowville. Each of those communities are too isolated for children to commute, though Morris commutes to each of her three schools at least once a week.
"I usually put on about an average of 600 miles a week, if not more," Morris shared.
While Morris helps parents get registered for services, Kobie gets a sticker as a present from her teacher.
The present reminds Jess to remind her daughter about something she left in the truck.
"Oh, I gotta run out in the truck!" exclaimed Kobie.
Minutes later, Ms. Dallon gets a blue sunflower key chain. A nice reminder of a kid who's hard to forget in a place that's hard to get to.
"It's our little secret, little piece of heaven," said Morris, "the best families, the best students, and there's no place like it."
