CIRCLEVILLE, Utah — The finalists for the Utah Hockey Club nickname are down to three, but the big question still remains — what will the name be?
For many fans, the right answer is the "Outlaws,” but what do Outlaws have to do with Utah?
As it turns out, it fits quite well.
A lot of the Outlaw name comes from a small home in Circleville that still stands today where a young man named Robert Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, once lived.
A LITTLE HOME FOR A BIG OUTLAW
Afton Morgan told us the tale of the home saying, "Butch left here in 1884 when his sister Lulu was born. She was the last of the children. Butch was the first of the children.”
Morgan owns the property, having actually acquired it from members of Butch’s family.
“Oh, when I grew up, most of the people said he was nothing but a darn bandit," he said with laughter.
The house has been taken apart and rebuilt log by log to ensure its preservation. Of course, being one of the most notorious outlaws ever comes with a lot of stories.
What do mammoths have to do with Utah?
"There's a lot of history,” Morgan said, adding, "I don't know how much of it is true, but there's got to be some truth in some of them. I debate the stories he came home from Bolivia.”
Perhaps Butch made it back; perhaps he didn’t after his supposed death in South America. But if he did, it’s said that he is buried in the hills above this home with Afton saying thousands of people have looked for that grave and never found it.
All of this contributes to why his name lives on.
"We don't know how much of it is true or if any of it is, right? That's right, and that's why he's still famous.” Morgan laughed.
THE SILVER SCREEN
Speaking of the movies, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," as well as hundreds of other western outlaw films, were also filmed right here IN uTAH, adding even more to the conversation.
"Well, film in Utah is one of the most untold, unknown stories," said James D’Arc, author of "When Hollywood Came to Utah."
His home is filled with original posters and movies that were filmed in Utah, all starting with the western.
"More films were made … westerns than any other genre," D'Arc explained. It's a unique American genre, but audiences were tired of the same locations.”
So the search was on as Utah residents started to reach out to the big Hollywood studios. Areas like Kanab and Moab became hot spots for the latest Western movie to be filmed, and the Utah movie industry was born, lending our beautiful landscape as a hideaway for all those outlaws.
"I think the outlaw westerns made in Utah, and there are so many of them,” D’Arc said, saying it helped “create the mythology of the outlaw and the western.”
It seems only fitting to the story that "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" is one of D’Arc’s favorites.
"It was going to be filmed in New Mexico.” he shared, but that changed, “Redford single-handily steered it to be filmed in his favorite, beloved places.”
THE OUTLAW LEGACY
At the end of our interview we popped on the movie, with D'Arc musing that one of his favorite lines is “Boy, you know every time I see Hole-in-the-Wall again, it's like seeing it fresh for the first time” as it reminds him of people are able to see Utah in a different light in film.
“When I see movies like this, I see that this is what the world sees, and they wish they could be here,” he explained.
So, while outlaws are no longer around, their legacy lives on the silver screen and the hope for fans is that a new hockey mascot might peak that fascination once again.
"Oh, I hope it does cause fans to wonder," D’Arc said. "I think it drives people to find out what the real facts were about so many of these outlaws.”
“People love to hear those kinds of stories,” Afton Morgan echoed, adding. “especially about the Old West and the horse riders and the ropers and the wrestlers. Yeah, in fact, I still do.”
So all that might make the Outlaws the perfect mascot.
