Comparison of Ungulate Pellets

I took a hike last week in a place used by three different species of ungulates. I didn't see any of them. So how did I know three species had been there? By their pellets, or scat, that they left behind.
I'm going to show you the photos and give you some clues. You see if you can figure out which three species left the following scat.

The first scat I examined closely looked just slightly larger than rabbit scat, but instead of being brown and totally round, it was black and slightly pointed at one end. The pellets were in a group, but rather scattered within the group.

What's your guess? If you said bighorn sheep, you are correct!

Scat Number Two:
I came across a place where the gravel had been cleared away. Adjacent it to it were two big piles of scat, along with a smaller pile and a wet area from urine in the cleared area. I surmised that this was a favorite ungulate hangout.

A close-up look at one of the piles of scat:

A close-up of the pellets, brownish-black, slightly dimpled, one end (or sometimes two) narrowed.

And your guess? If you said deer, you are correct! We have mule deer out here, a LOT of them. Deer scat is about the size of a raisin, although not quite as wrinkly. I'm not sure if I should admit this, but I have a fun prank that deals with deer scat. (If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you read about it here.) I've given talks about scat to school kids. I like to have samples of various scat with me (in Ziploc bags--in reality, handling scat with your bare hands is not the best idea and can lead to nasty diseases, so don't do what I'm doing.) Anyway, I show the kids the deer scat and ask them how they can figure out how old it is. After I hear their more reasonable guesses, I tell them that the best way to do it is to do a taste test. I pretend to take a pellet out of the bag, while palming a Raisinet instead. I pop the Raisinet in my mouth, bite down on it slowly, and make an appropriately theatrical expression. While the kids look on, faces frozen in horror, I declare the age of the deer scat.

It's an awesome prank.

I may have scarred some kids for life. Probably not. But they may never look at scat the same way again.

Okay, last ungulate scat of the day:

This scat is also black and in pellet form like the other two, but is noticeably larger. Here's a close-up:

Your guess? Elk is the correct answer. They are bigger animals, so it only makes sense that they leave behind bigger poo.

Although all these three ungulate scats look similar, it doesn't take too much detective work to tell them apart. And the more practice, the easier it gets.

Thanks for joining me in this little soiree into the leftover matters of life.

In Search of Newhouse

 On Saturday on the way to town (town meaning any place with more than 200 people), I decided I wanted to go find Newhouse, a ghost town. I knew that some of the first settlers in the area where I live had gotten off the train at Newhouse and continued by wagon over the mountain ranges and basins. I was recently reminded of Newhouse when I discovered the book Utah Ghost Rails by Stephen Carr and Robert Edwards. I found it at the Utah DNR Bookstore, one of my favorite places to browse for local publications. In the book, I found information about the railroad tracks extending from Frisco, a rowdy ghost town near Milford, Utah, to Newhouse. I had seen remnants of those tracks from Highway 21, but hadn't thought much about them. With Desert Boy's love of trains, I figured it was time to make the journey.

 I thought I knew which road led to Newhouse. When we saw the above mining remains, I figured we were on the right track. The hole in the ground intrigued me, so I got out and found that it went deeper than I could see. Scary!

The good road continued, but we didn't see more old mining structures. Instead, we saw this:

 Modern equipment and fresh piles of rock. Had someone started reworking the old mines near Newhouse? Or were these new ones?

The road was gated and no one was around, so we didn't have our questions answered. We turned around and headed up a little two-track road.

We didn't get far. We found another gate and a sign saying that the area was owned by Horn Silver Mines, Inc. I recognized the name from the Frisco side.

I saw a couple of adits on the hillside.

We still didn't know where Newhouse was, and the roads were a little too rocky for the van, so we parked and started hiking.

Desert Girl wanted me to take a picture of her.

We hiked for a bit, but the kids quickly decide that wasn't what they really wanted to do. They wanted to go back to the van. On the way, though, they found a distraction.

It was time to rock climb!

Desert Boy made it to the top and was happy. We headed back to the highway, with a detour down another two track road. We encountered some other people who were also looking for Newhouse but couldn't find it.

So we headed to Milford and got directions at the tourist information in the caboose. We needed to go back down in the valley more. So after running a bunch of errands and enjoying the Minersville swimming pool, we headed back towards Newhouse. This time we found it, with a turnoff from Highway 21 near mile marker 57. (One book says the road used to be marked, but it certainly isn't now. However, if you look off into the distance, you can see some of the buildings from the highway--something I had never noticed before.)

Out among the cactus and cheatgrass, we found some old buildings.

We found quite a few old foundations.

The kids had a great time looking for lizards.

The Cactus Mine was started in 1870, before the mine in Frisco. But it didn't have many investors and little was mined until 1900, when Samuel Newhouse came from Salt Lake City. He had previously invested in the copper mines up Bingham Canyon, which proved quite successful. With his capital, plus investments from England and France, the Cactus Mine was worked more and proved to be profitable. A town developed on Newhouse's land around the mine, called Tent-town due to the temporary nature of the "buildings".

A few years later, the mine was still going strong, and some permanent buildings were erected. The town became known as Newhouse and included a cafe, library, livery stable, hospital, several stores, and a hotel. It even had an opera house and dance hall. Water was not available right there, so it was piped in from Wah Wah Springs five miles west, and an electrical system was installed. Water not used for mining and culinary purposes irrigated the city park. The saloon and red light district were relegated to a mile outside of town, off of Newhouse's property. The town was orderly in contrast to Frisco around the hill, which at its heydey had 23 saloons and was known as the wildest town in the Great Basin (from Stephen Carr's Utah Ghost Towns).

Hmm...opera house vs. 23 saloons...

The Utah Southern Extension Railroad built a depot at the end of the Frisco Branch.  In addition to the Frisco Branch, a separate standard gauge railroad named the Newhouse, Copper Gulch & Sevier Lake was built between the Cactus Mine and the Cactus Mill.

The ore didn't last forever, though. It didn't even last for long. About five years after the town was settled, the Cactus Mine gave out, after producing $3.5 million worth of ore.  Other mines in the area weren't big producers, so the town, like most mining towns, quickly quieted. Many buildings were moved into Milford. The cafe continued, serving sheep and cattlemen and a few miner, until 1921 when it burned down. The tracks were pulled up to Frisco in 1927, and then the track from Frisco to Milford was taken up by August 1943.

Although most of the town had disappeared, I was surprised by how many remnants we could still see.

We were short on time, so only got a quick glimpse of some of the structures and foundations.

We found that the road followed part of the old railroad bed. It started getting a little too rocky for our van so we had to turn around. But we'll be back to explore more of this neat old ghost town.

Astronomy Festival

 We joined the gathering at the Transit of Venus party at Great Basin National Park on June 5. Folks were taking a break from the telescopes to let clouds go by.

Once they cleared, we peeked through the telescopes. To me, the Transit of Venus isn't a spectacular sight, just a little dot in front of the sun. What I do really like is watching Venus move and thinking about the history of what it's represented to the astronomy world.

To see that change in movement, we took a break and went into the visitor center to see the exhibits.

 Desert Girl was ready to run! Her babysitter had done her hair in French braids, and it was absolutely adorable.

 Desert Girl liked the border collie resting under the sheep camp.

 She also liked the kangaroo rat.

The spadefoot toads were another attraction. I always get a little uneasy when Desert Girl pets the fake rattlesnake, and try to make sure she knows that she should never do that in the wild.

Then it was time to head back outside. Ranger Steve was really helpful getting the kids positioned looking through the telescope.

 
We're all set to join in the activities for the Astronomy Festival at Great Basin National Park June 14-16. And as a bonus, the Snake Valley Festival will be held June 15-17, so there will be lots of great things to do this weekend!

Smith Creek Cave

 Half way up the tall limestone cliffs of Smith Creek Canyon is a gaping hole. It's called Smith Creek Cave, and over the years as I've driven by I've wanted to go up and see what was there. When my friend Andrea and her family came to visit, I decided the time was right. They liked caves and were ready for a hike. So we packed up and drove out to the canyon.

The kids were quite excited about the creek fording. Most of the year Smith Creek by the canyon mouth is dry, but it's running now due to spring (and summer) runoff. After we crossed the creek, we drove along the road until we found what we thought was the closest place to hike to the cave. There's no trail, so we were off on a wild adventure.

We started off about 10 am, and it was already quite warm by then. First we had to trek through a long slope covered in thick cheatgrass.

I had Desert Girl in the backpack, so I was really appreciative of Andrea and her husband, Kevin, who helped Desert Boy quite a bit.

 

 Especially when we got to this rock climbing section! There's a scrambling route around it, but Desert Boy's friend, just a year older than him, is a great climber and was up it in a flash.

Andrea and her daughter, with the valley bottom already far in the distance.

We had to take several breaks, trying to find a little shade next to the juniper trees. Desert Girl got a little crabby, so I had to feed her snacks the whole way up. Finally we made it.

The entrance was much larger than it had looked from below. The main room of the cave goes back in quite a ways, and we liked the shade and cooler temperatures.

After a snack break, we started exploring. There are several pits in the cave, as the cave has been the subject of paleontological and archeological surveys.

Here's what paleontologist Timothy Heaton has to say about Smith Creek Cave:
"New species of mountain goat (Stock 1936), eagle (Howard 1935), and gigantic vulture (Howard 1952) were described from Smith Creek Cave, the primary site. Literature on the Smith Creek Canyon sites includes a description of the avifauna by Howard (1952), the micromammalian fauna by Goodrich (1965), the herpetofauna by Brattstrom (1976), the whole fossil assemblage by Miller (1979) and Mead et al. (1982), and the archaeology by Bryan (1979), Harrington (1934), and others."

Wow, this cave may be a pain in the butt to get to, but it sure has revealed some really neat things! The mountain goat was named Harrington's Mountain Goat, and was smaller than today's mountain goat, with a narrower face and thinner horns. It existed for at least 19,000 years, before disappearing about 11,000 B.C.


The gigantic vulture may have been the largest North American bird capable of flight, with a wingspan of 16-17 feet (5 m)! It was originally named Teratornis incredibilis, but later the name changed (as so many do!) and is now known as Aiolornis incredibilis.


The archeological excavations of the cave showed that the cave was reoccupied periodically between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C., which is considered the Paleo-Indian period. This is when Lake Bonneville inundated parts of Snake Valley, huge animals lived in the area, and the vegetation distribution differed significantly from today. The excavations completed in 1968, 1971, and 1974  showed that the users of the cave hunted mountain sheep, other artiodacctyls (hoofed animals), buffalo, and a small camelid. In the cave, they processed hides (Bryan 1977).

I had a vague recollection of a cave map and that there was a passage that went back in a ways. Kevin graciously volunteered to stay with Emma in the big room while Andrea and I took the older kids back farther into the cave.

The belly crawl through packrat scat was really dusty and unpleasant, but it led into a bigger room where we could stand. We didn't find any notable formations. The dusty floor led up steeply, so we followed it. Then we saw some light. Another entrance!

It was nice to get out to some fresh air. I tiptoed to the edge to see if there was a way back down to the main entrance so we wouldn't have to go back through all the dust, but it was a steep drop off.

The kids were all good sports, eager to explore.

One of the surprises at the upper entrance was a sizable amount of nailhead spar. This calcite crystal made some beautiful patterns. Some of the spar had fallen off and looked like big dinosaur teeth. That was amusing to at least one of the little cavers.

The kids spotted another passageway, so we went down it, hoping again that it might be a way to avoid the dusty passages. But alas, it dead ended quickly and we had to slither our way back through the dusty passages.

Back in the big room, we enjoyed the great views.

I can only imagine what it was like for the Paleo-Indians to be sitting in the cave, looking out over the valley. They would have seen a lake lapping at the shores, much greener vegetation (none of that reddish cheatgrass that is in the photo above!), and interesting animals occasionally passing into view.

We would have stayed longer, but we were getting hungry, and lunch was down below.

So we said our goodbyes and started down.

Smith Creek Cave isn't a cave I would go to for fun caving, but the paleontological and archeological context make it interesting.

Kevin really helped Desert Boy on the way down.

We had our own little mountain goat!

After we got down, we ate lunch in a little rock shelter just up the road, and then it was time to go get clean.

And what better place to get clean than Gandy Warm Springs!

The kids swam until they had goose bumps.

Desert Girl was leery of the water at first, but before long she was totally immersing herself.

The cool water (about 80 degrees F) felt great.

And the scenery was beautiful. The kids thought this was the best part of the day. Maybe the adults, too. But we especially appreciated the warm springs after the hot hike and dusty cave!