The Old, Abandoned Trail

One day while I was tromping through the woods, I came across this sign, "Trail not maintained for public use." Hmmm, what did that mean?  I figured that there was something important enough for someone to have built a trail there in the first place, even if no one was using it now.

So I did what anyone else would do and kept going.

Actually Henry took the lead, clearing the trail and ensuring my safety. Okay, probably not, but at least he was getting some exercise. 

The trail was really an old road, wide and easy to follow. My curiosity grew. A road meant that there might be something important ahead.

And then I saw this log off to the side of the old road, a rough-cut old log. It reminded me of a Lincoln log like the ones I used to play with in my grandma's basement. After we got done making all sorts of neat houses, we had fun catapulting the little lincoln logs all across the basement. She's probably still finding them in the corners.

On the other side of the old road was an honest to goodness Lincoln log cabin. The ends of the logs were notched so they would fit together. It was extremely cool. As you can see by the tree growing in the cabin, the roof fell in a really long time ago.

The scenery was nice, but why did someone build a home here? The answer was just a little further up the road. A big pile of dirt, a tailings pile, alerted me to a nearby mine. It turns out that they used to mine silver up this canyon. I'm always amazed at the really remote places people lived in the old days. Today modern vehicles shorten distances, but it still took nearly an hour to get to where I started hiking. In the old days, it would easily have been at least half a day in a wagon. These people were tough, not being able to pop into a convenience store to get some milk or eggs or ice cream when they ran out.

Seeing the old cabin made me appreciate what I usually take for granted. Maybe it's good to take the road less traveled every once in awhile.

A Desert Dump

While I was out walking this morning, some brown objects amongst the desert vegetation caught my attention. A small wash had some old, rusty tin cans in it. I decided to take a closer look, and started walking up the wash. 

Dumps in the desert are fairly common, especially because early miners rarely took any garbage with them. They didn't have Uhauls back then; they often were lucky to have a good wagon. Many miners only took what they could carry on their back from one mining town to the next. Once in awhile they left something interesting behind.

Some bright blue glass was a nice bit of color contrasting with the other trash. Often people go out and scour the desert looking for these trash piles, because an intact bottle might be worth a dollar or two if it's old enough.

Some of the old debris is a bit confounding. Why is this metal bucket filled with concrete? Washes can be good places to find the old trash because it gets washed down them, and it was also easier for people to throw things downhill or dump a wagon into the gully.

I walked long enough to find the motherlode, a huge pile of old tin cans. I happened to be on National Park Service land, and the park archeologist has trained the staff not to pick up old cans like this. Even though it might look like trash to most of us, because it is over 50 years old, it is considered historic, and is thus protected. If the old tin cans are taken to the archeologist, she loses information about where they came from. She also has to catalogue them and put them in the museum. The museum is a locked room where no one gets to see them, so they don't do much good there. She likes to tell the story of a Boy Scout troop who thought they were doing a good deed and brought her three or four trash bags full of old tin cans. She had to process each one, plus they made the historic district they were taken from lose some of its flavor.

When I look at these trash piles, I can only wonder what people are going to think about our trash someday. 

Desert Destination: Frisco, Utah: Ghost Town and Charcoal Ovens

Every Monday we visit a desert destination.

These are charcoal ovens, used in the late 1800s to produce charcoal to run smelters to process the ore found at nearby mines. These particular ovens are found at Frisco, Utah just off Highway 21. 

Okay, if you're trying to find Frisco on a map, you probably won't have much luck, because absolutely no one lives at Frisco anymore. But during its heydey, almost six thousand people lived here. Before I get into that history, let me tell you a little more about these charcoal ovens.

They have an arched entryway, big enough for a person to enter. They were filled up with about 35 cords of wood: pinyon pine, juniper, sagebrush, and whatever else was close by and available. Then fires were set and over the next few days this wood was reduced to about 1,000 bushels of charcoal, which was small and compact. It took approximately 13 days to go through the entire process of loading the oven, burning the wood, and moving the charcoal.

Each of the charcoal ovens has a window high in the wall opposite the door to improve ventilation. I've tried to find information about how this window might be closed, but I've found very little information about how these charcoal ovens operated. (If you know more, please let me know!)

The shape of the charcoal ovens is a beehive, or parabolic, which helped to concentrate the heat into the middle of the oven. Look closely to the right of the door, and you can see little holes in the rocks. These provided additional ventilation and could be plugged or opened as needed.

Desert Boy enters one of the charcoal ovens, giving you a sense of scale. To the right are some little light spots in the wall--those small ventilation holes. The more intact charcoal ovens are quite dark inside, the rocks stained with dark soot.

Five charcoal ovens were originally built in Frisco in 1877 by the Frisco Mining and Smelting Company. This company decided it would be profitable to invest in the area due to the high-producing silver mines in the San Francisco Mountains, particularly the Horn Silver Mine, discovered in 1875. 

The charcoal ovens are about two miles away from the major hub of mining. As more ore was found, a town sprang up. It included a post office, and in 1880 the Utah Southern Railroad extended into town from Milford, Utah, 15 miles to the east. It became much more profitable to ship the ore out. It also became much easier to get water in; very little water is found close to Frisco.

The town grew and gained a reputation for being the wildest mining town in the San Francisco district. It had over 20 saloons, gambling dens, and brothels lining the rocky streets, and a population of nearly 6,000. Murders became so frequent that city officials decided to hire a lawman from Pioche, Nevada and give him free rein. When he rode into town, he reportedly said he wasn't going to build a jail or make arrests. Criminals had two options: get out of town or get shot. Some didn't believe him, and the first night he apparently shot six outlaws. After that Frisco became a much calmer place.

This mill was built near the mines. Just ten years after the profitable mines were discovered, a momentous event occurred. It was the morning of February 12, 1885, and the day shift was preparing to enter the mine. Several tremors had been felt, and they were told to wait. The night shift came to the surface, and a few minutes later a massive cave-in collapsed most of the mine, including the most profitable areas. Amazingly, no one was killed.

Over $60 million worth of zinc, lead, silver, copper, and gold had been hauled away from Frisco in those 10 years. After the cave-in, mining eventually resumed, but never at the same scale, and slowly the town of Frisco faded away. By 1900 only about 500 people remained, and by the 1920's the town had been abandoned.

Few buildings remain, but this old stone wall hint at the town that once existed. 

A small cemetery is located between the charcoal ovens and the mines. I found it to be one of the most depressing mining cemeteries I have ever visited. Despite the reports of the outlaws and murders in Frisco, I'd estimate that nearly three-quarters of those buried there were infants or children. The cemetery is definitely a reminder that although we might look back at ghost towns with a hint of nostalgia, the life was hard and lacking most comforts that we take for granted today.

Frisco's days may not be totally over. In 2002 a mining company bought the rights for the mines and has begun reworking them. Although the mining areas are closed off, the charcoal ovens and cemetery are still open for visitors.

Desert Destination: Parowan Gap Petroglyphs

Every Monday we visit a desert destination.

Located north of Cedar City, Utah, the Parowan Gap petroglyphs grace a steep rockface. Although many petroglyph locations are kept secret to help preserve them, these are not because a road goes right next to them. The BLM (Bureau of Land Management--it manages most of the public land in the West) has erected interpretive signs and a fence. 

The petroglyphs were made by prehistoric Fremont and Southern Paiute cultures and placed on the National Historic Register in 1969. Although people guess what the petroglyphs mean, no one knows for certain what they all mean. That's part of the fun of looking at petroglyphs, thinking about what compelled someone to scrape a rock on the bigger rock and why they decided to draw what they did. They obviously had to spend some time to make the drawings, and likely they represent a number of different activities and counts. 

Here's the road that leads through Parowan Gap. The gap is a split in a three-mile long ridge of Jurassic Navajo Sandstone that's about 100 meters (300 feet) higher than the valley floor. Much of the sandstone has shattered, and the fence in the Gap not only protects the petroglyphs but also keeps falling rocks from getting out on the road. The Gap is the result of a stream that eroded away the sedimentary rock as it was being pushed upwards along a fault line.

This set of petroglyphs appears to have fewer human-like and animal drawings than many others I've seen. Instead it contains a large number of geometric designs, like the squares with dots on the right hand side and  the glyph in the middle called the Zipper. Recent research indicates that this area was used as a calendar. To learn more, click here.

These petroglyphs were first brought to the world's attention in 1849, when Parley P. Pratt led an expedition to look for new settlement sites. Over time, the Gap was used as an access route and a quarry. The road was expanded and some of the petroglyphs were lost. It's estimated that about half of the original petroglyphs are still present.

Sagebrush grows next to the small parking area. When Desert Boy and I visited, we had the place to ourselves, and most of the time this is a quiet spot. Crowds occasionally gather, such as during the summer solstice, when a local puts on a special presentation about the petroglyphs or when bike tours take a break.

On the left side of the above photo, you can see what looks like a sideways horseshoe; perhaps it is a map. On the right side is what appears to be a bighorn sheep. When visiting petroglyphs, it's fine to take photos, but touching the rock leaves behinds oils that can degrade the art. Some of the drawings may have been made over a thousand years ago. It is amazing how they have survived the wind and sun and rain and how they can inspire us.

Happy First Day of Autumn!

Visit to a Garnet Mine

As we drove up to Hampton Creek for our hike, we saw these mining remains near the trailhead. The old mill was used to process garnets.

Garnets are often dark red minerals (they also come in other colors) that are used as the January birthstone. In addition, they have several uses such as industrial abrasives. The word garnet comes from the Latin word granatus, which means “like a grain.” 

The Hampton Creek mines processed garnets and sold them for some years with test shipments made in the 1960s. A few mining remnants remain.

Here's one of the metal structures. I'm always surprised by how many mines are located so far away from civilization. We live in the middle of nowhere and we had to drive about an hour into even more nowhere to get to the mine.

This is a water tank that provided water for the operation. Apparently it wasn't worth it to move it to a new location.

The garnets found in Hampton Creek are the hardest and most common garnet type called Almandite with a chemical formula of Fe3Al2Si3O12. 

Not sure what you should be looking at in this photo? See those roundish little black specks? Those are the garnets! They weren't quite what I was expecting either. Under the right light conditions they sparkle, making them easy to find, but on this particular day I had to really look for them. Once you know what you're looking for, they are easy to find, albeit small. These were in the road cut at the parking area for the Hampton Creek trail. At some locations garnets are found within rock, but here they are in an alluvial deposit.

The garnets are fun to pick up and sort of pretty. These certainly wouldn't make valuable jewelry, but they do meet neat mementos.

Desert Destination: An Old Homestead

Every Monday we visit a desert destination.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to visit an old homestead, one so old that it's for the most part been forgotten. A few signs of it still remain, like this square nail. The site is not easy to find, but we had a guide.

After driving a distance on a two-track road, we got out of the vehicle and started walking among some sandy knolls. The sun was bright, with not a cloud in the sky. It was a typical hot summer day.

As we got further from the vehicle, the vegetation became sparser. Could this be right, was there really an old homestead out here? Who would want to live in such a desolate place when not that far away much more hospitable places could be found? Anxious to find out, and lagging behind due to all the pictures I was taking, I hurried to meet with the rest of the group and see what they were looking at.

Sure enough, there was an old wooden log. Our guide explained that the area had once been substantially wetter. The homestead was close to a freighter route that was used to take supplies to the mines.

This obviously isn't one of the freighters, but it is an old wagon and helps me get in the mindset of how hard life was back then. My goodness, the wheels are made of wood! There's no suspension, much less comfortable seats, air conditioning, and a radio. Travel would have been a lot different than it is today.

Here's another view of the wagon. Can you imagine how dusty you would get sitting in it, behind horses that would be kicking up the dry dirt? And back in those days you might only have one outfit, so you wouldn't even be able to put on a clean outfit when you arrived at your destination. You'd just shake off the dust, and everyone smelled a little ripe so you wouldn't even notice--maybe. The definition of a shower was standing under a waterfall or a bucket, and a hot shower was probably beyond most people's comprehension.

Some old barbed wire was nearby. I imagine that they used it to fence in stock animals. Back in the early days of the homesteads, in the late 1800s, there were very few fences up in the valley. Herds of sheep used the valley as winter range, and the sheepherders moved them all over, following the grass.

A few more square nails and some old glass lie over on the side. But beyond these few reminders of someone trying to scratch out a life in the harsh desert, we can't find anything. Our imaginations fill in the blanks as we think about how these hardy people survived.

Not too far away are shells, indicating the increased water of the past made it possible not only for humans, but also for other creatures to survive. 

Living in the desert is not easy, especially when you don't have the conveniences of today, and more importantly, when you don't have water. After the water dried up (probably due to nearby pumping for irrigation), the vegetation died off, and the wind carried off the fine particles of sand, leaving just the coarser material behind. The site is called "the blow out" because of this, and on very windy days, the wind still blows dust from this area. It's such a change from the time when it appeared to be a good place to build a house and make a living. 

Fossils: A Glimpse of the Past

One of the benefits of living in the desert is that the trees don't get in the way of covering up the rock, so we can see large expanses of it. Some people might say that this is really boring, and yeah, it can be. But in certain areas, the rocks are fascinating, even to a non-geologist like me. I've been trying to learn more about geology, and in that quest have learned which layers of rock are most likely to contain fossils. I find these most fascinating because they give us glimpses of what used to live here.

We have lots of exposures of sedimentary rocks (the type of rock where fossils are found), but because the rocks were laid down at different time periods and under different conditions, the fossils can be very diverse even within the same mountain range. There are also some sedimentary rocks that have no fossils at all, so it's good to have a guidebook or two. I've spent some time looking for fossils in the wrong rock type and that's no fun.

Here are some really cool fossils that look like they're coming right out of the rock. Many of the creatures that lived in the seas hundreds of millions of years ago no longer exist, but some have relatives that we still see today. I still have lots of work to do to be able to identify the fossils. With over 200 different fossils in this valley alone, it's nice to know I won't get bored.

Here are some more fossils that look like they're popping out of the rock. The one in the middle looks like a shell you might find on the beach.

These fossils are in the rock and have such pretty patterns. It's fun to think back to the time when this was all water and not a dry desert!