A History of Daggett County

005_Natural history and early inhabitants

CHAPTER 1 NATURAL HISTORY AND EARLY INHABITANTS The Uinta Mountains, some 150 to 160 miles long and 30 to 50 miles wide, run east and west, keen, snow- slashed peaks steeping in the sunlight, unique in their trend among the Rockies. - ANN ZWINGER I . t is a land of spectacular redrock cliffs, snowcapped mountains, tall pines, and Whitewater rapids. Daggett County may be small in population, but it has landscape on a grand scale. This rugged coun­tryside, a boon to modern recreationists, has generally made life dif­ficult for the area's human inhabitants. Moreso than many places, climate and terrain have done much to shape this area's history. Daggett County is a narrow strip of land along the northern slope of Utah's Uinta Mountains. Bounded basically by the crest of the Uintas on the south, the Wyoming state line on the north, the Colorado state line on the east, and Summit County on the west, it is Utah's twenty- ninth and youngest county. The east- west- trending Uinta Mountains and the Green River are the county's preeminent geographic features. The Green River generally flows from north to south, but where it strikes the Uintas it makes an abrupt turn to the HISTORY OF DAGGETT COUNTY east through Horseshoe and Red canyons. It curves southward again where it leaves Browns Park, a valley shared by Utah and Colorado. Many creeks flow down to the Green River, and their drainages have been magnets for human activity. The valley of Henrys Fork, the Lucerne Valley, and Browns Park have historically been the impor­tant local areas of human settlement. Unfortunately, modern political boundaries were set without much thought to local geography. The rural communities along the north slope of the Uinta Mountains are interrelated and closely tied to the Green River- Rock Springs area of Wyoming, but they have been divided politically among three states. The Henrys Fork Valley is split between Utah and Wyoming, and the Utah- Colorado state line divides Browns Park. This land where Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado meet is sometimes called the " Three Corners," and it would not be unheard of for a resident of the area to live in Utah, work in Wyoming, and run livestock in Colorado. The region is part of the Rocky Mountain Physiographic Province, bounded on the west by the eastern Great Basin Province and somewhat farther on the south by the northern portion of the Colorado Plateau Province. The climate is that of northern moun­tains, with short cool summers and long winters featuring abundant snowfall. Elevation ranges within the county move from 12,028- foot Leidy Peak to a low of about 5,365 feet where the Green River exits the county. Life zones in the county begin with the Transition ( from 5,500 feet to 8,000 feet in elevation), which features mountain brush plants including sagebrush and scrub oak as well as pinyon and juniper and ponderosa pine. The next zone is the Canadian ( 8,000 to 10,000 feet), where lodgepole pine, Douglas fir, and quaking aspen are dominant plants. The Hudsonian zone ranges from about 10,000 feet to tim-berline at about 11,000 feet; its largest plants are spruces and firs. Grasses and small plants are found in the Arctic- Alpine zone above timberline. 1 Animals in the county are typical of those zones in the West and represent a wide variety of many types and species, partic­ularly insects, birds, and mammals, although some reptiles and even amphibians can be found in the county. Large mammals include mountain lion, bobcat, black bear, elk, mule deer, badger, skunk, rac­coon, and other species common to the Rocky Mountain region. NATURAL HISTORY AND EARLY INHABITANTS Meadows at the Summit of the Uinta Mountains in southern Daggett County. ( Utah State Historical Society) Dominating the landscape and history of the county are the Uinta Mountains, the only major east- west mountain range in North America. The Uinta Mountains are of rather recent origin, however; much of the exposed rock in the Uintas is of great antiquity- some being Precambrian metamorphic rock well over one billion years old. Some of this rock has been broken and uplifted- faulted and folded in geologic terms- in the relatively recent past, after having been buried by increasing layers of sedimentation for hundreds of millions of years. The Uinta Range actually began its formation as a trough- a depression in the earth periodically washed and submerged by ancient shallow seas. Over many millennia, the trough sank and filled with several layers of sediment. The Uinta uplift began some 80 mil­lion years ago during the mountain- building event called the Laramide ( Rocky Mountain) Orogeny. Ancient layers of rock pushed up and through more recent strata, and the Uintas began to take shape as they are known today- an anticlinal fold about 160 miles long and thirty miles wide. The mountains contain twenty- six major HISTORY OF DAGGETT COUNTY formations, most of which are sedimentary rocks dating from the Precambrian to the Cenozoic periods. Though they contain almost no known commercially viable mineral deposits, they reveal a fossil record spanning 500 million years. 2 The mountain range actually consists of two elliptical domelike segments that merge near the present town of Manila. The western dome, or High Uintas, grew to have a well- defined ridgeline with a number of peaks approaching 13,000 feet in elevation. Their barren snowcapped peaks are a marked contrast to the eastern portion of the range. The eastern Uintas, the eastern dome, which lies within Daggett County, are much lower and drier, and their ridgeline is less distinct. Deadman's Peak, at 12,280 feet, is the highest point on the eastern section. The crest of this dome, between two inward- dipping faults, eventually collapsed, leaving an irregular complex of ridge lines that has been a vexation to modern surveyors. During the Ice Ages, the summits, ridge lines, and canyons of the Uintas were scoured by glaciers, which produced the wide valleys in the mountains. The most dramatic glaciation occurred in the High Uintas, but glacial activity also took place along the eastern portion of the range. Significant glaciated areas include Burnt Fork, the several forks of Sheep Creek, Beaver Creek, and Carter Creek. According to one geological study, the Burnt Fork glacier was about eleven miles in length. 3 Complementing the geologic epic of the Uinta Mountains is the story of the Green River, a legendary river of the fur trade and the Mountain West. At their greatest height, the Uintas separated what are now the upper and lower basins of the Green River. The upper ( northern) basin drained eastward toward the Platte River, while the lower ( southern) basin, as today, drained southward. When the area of Wyoming known as the Great Divide Basin started to rise during the Laramide Orogeny, it dammed off the northern basin's outlet and created a lake. The subsequent collapse of the eastern Uinta summit provided this lake a new route to the sea, and upper- basin water carved a channel through Flaming Gorge, Red Canyon, Browns Park, Lodore Canyon, and Split Mountain Canyon to join the lower Green River in the Uinta Basin. In the process, the north slope tributaries- Birch Creek, Birch Spring Draw, Sheep Creek, Carter Creek, Spring NATURAL HISTORY AND EARLY INHABITANTS Browns Hole. ( Utah State Historical Society) Creek, Cart Creek, Jackson Creek, Red Creek, Crouse Creek, Willow Creek, and others- were altered to flow southward. 4 The intense geologic forces that built the Uintas and influenced the carving path of the Green River also produced other impressive features of the terrain. Extensive faults parallel the mountains on both the north and the south. Action along these faults created the dramatic Palisades in lower Sheep Creek Canyon as well as the Flaming Gorge cliffs. Anticlinal movements also formed the Glades, which are parallel hogback ridges at the east end of the county, and erosion scoured out the Green River's magnificent Red Canyon. While beautiful to behold, this tortured landscape has impeded human movement. The broken canyon country and often snow-packed mountains form a natural barrier that is traditionally impass­able during much of the year. Yet, within this difficult country there are sheltered drainages, valleys, and basins that are far more hos­pitable to people and livestock than are the surrounding windswept badlands. Henrys Fork, Browns Park, and other smaller valleys in the county have microclimates that have made them inviting to humans for thousands of years. HISTORY OF DAGGETT COUNTY Indeed, throughout the area there is extensive evidence of long­standing human occupation. Stone chips, projectile points, firepits, middens, and petroglyphs suggest that the Green River corridor has been both a thoroughfare and an area of habitation for ancient peoples. Remains of Clovis, Folsom, and Piano cultures have been found in southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah, testimony to as much as 11,000 years ( or more) of human activity in the region. These Paleo- Indian people are thought to have engaged in a hunting-and- gathering subsistence lifestyle that relied heavily on the taking of large game animals. The Paleo- Indians were followed by a cultural stage archaeolo­gists identify as the Archaic people, who flourished from about 8000 B. C. to the beginning of the Christian era. Early and Middle Archaic peoples sometimes constructed pithouses, indicating that they had a sedentary lifestyle at least at certain times of the year. Their subsis­tence pattern was more generalized than that of the earlier Paleo- Indians; they relied on the hunting of all manner of game as well as the collecting and cooking of various plant species. Their tools and clothing were more advanced than those of the Paleo- Indians, and they are known to have used the atlatl ( spear thrower) for hunting large game. Snares and traps were fashioned to capture small animals. Excavations from Late Archaic sites have yielded bones of bison, ante­lope, deer, and rabbit. 5 Around the beginning of the Christian era, the Archaic period ended with the appearance of what archaeologists call the Fremont culture. The Fremont Indians were an agricultural people with a semisedentary lifestyle. They built dry- masonry structures and made ceramics. Moreso than their predecessors, they relied on flora gath­ered from wetlands, marshes, and streams for food and clothing. The Uinta variant of this culture seems to have flourished between about 450 and 1,000 A. D. The Uinta Fremont farmed at sites along the Green River, storing their corn in nearby granaries constructed under overhangs and other protected areas along the canyon walls. This group relied more on hunting than the Fremont of southern Utah. They used the bow and arrow to hunt large animals, and excavations at the Summit Springs hunting camp reveal numerous bones of bighorn sheep. 6 NATURAL HISTORY AND EARLY INHABITANTS , Looking back toward Browns Hole from Lodore Canyon of the Green River. ( Utah State Historical Society) HISTORY OF DAGGETT COUNTY Most Fremont Indians were located in the eastern Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau country. The scattered remains they left in Daggett County suggest that few of them lived north of the Uinta Mountains. Those that did were primarily at lower elevations with the vast majority of identified Fremont Indian sites located along the Green River and its tributaries. At a Fremont site several miles south of Manila, the Indians built dry- wall masonry structures to store their seasonal harvests. Several petroglyph and pictograph panels were found at this site. Here and at other sites, remains of ceramics were found. Clay pots were used to carry and store all kinds of seeds, especially pinyon nuts. Metates ( slabs used for grinding seeds) and various kinds of tools made of bone or stone have also been found at Fremont sites in the county. 7 The Fremont peoples were highly accomplished as builders, tool and implement makers, and as craftsmen and artists. They were able to adapt to harsh environments, and they lived in the region for well over one thousand years. Their rather mysterious disappearance occurred about the same time as that of the Anasazi to the south. There is currently no consensus of opinion regarding the demise of the Fremont peoples. Archaeologists and ethnohistorians specu­late that they were driven out by prolonged drought or that they were destroyed or assimilated by other invading Indian peoples. Whatever the case, it is unfortunate that we do not know more about the Fremont. They raised food, built shelters, and fashioned clothing, tools, and weapons. They hunted game in the mountains, and their petroglyphs and pictographs suggest that they contemplated the mys­teries of the universe. The Fremont Indians made a living in and called home a country that Europeans would later describe as a hos­tile wilderness. By A. D. 1350, the Fremont culture in most of Utah had been replaced by Numic speakers, the ancestors of the modern Shoshoni and Ute indians. This country was a vast improvement over their original homeland of southern Nevada, California, and northwestern Mexico. These were among the most primitive tribes on the conti­nent. Sparse resources had forced them to hunt and gather in small family groups, and social organization was only minimally devel-oped. They were often on the brink of starvation, and only at certain NATURAL HISTORY AND EARLY INHABITANTS Flaming Gorge Reservoir, looking southwest from the Visitor's Overlook north of the dam. ( Allan Kent Powell) times and places when the food supply permitted were they able to gather in large groups. It is easily understood why, given the opportunity, these people migrated to a more hospitable territory. As in earlier times, the Uinta Mountains presented a formidable natural barrier. The mountains traditionally marked the frontier between the two Indian nations that occupied the region into the historic period. To the south lived the mountain Utes; to the north were the Eastern Shoshoni. The Shoshoni, sometimes referred to as the Snake Indians, were active traders long before the coming of Europeans. They traded with the rich tribes along the Columbia River, with the Utes to the south, and, through their Crow neighbors, they obtained goods from the Missouri River villages of the Mandan- Hidatsa. They were an enter­prising people and an important link in the protohistoric North American trade network. 8 Shoshoni culture adapted to and flourished in this new home­land. Skins of large game animals were tailored into clothing, replac­ing the rabbitskin robes that had been worn in the Great Basin 10 HISTORY OF DAGGETT COUNTY The Henrys Fork near Linwood before the area was covered by Flaming Gorge Reservoir. ( Courtesy Pauleen Baker) winters. The diet also diversified. Besides large game, t h e Eastern Shoshoni are known to have eaten roasted pine n u t s and juniper berries, a bread made from sunflower seeds, powdered serviceberries, and various wild vegetables and tubers. The greater food resources allowed larger concentrations of people and a more sophisticated social structure. Gender roles became more specific, as men spent more time h u n t i n g and women specialized in gathering foods and cultivating the domestic arts. 9 Henrys Fork and Browns Park became favorite wintering grounds for the members of the tribe. O n his Green River expedition of 1825, William H. Ashley camped in Browns Park. He wrote of the site as: a spot of ground where several thousand Indians had wintered dur­ing the last season. . . . Many of their lodges remained as perfect as when occupied. They were made of poles two or three inches in diameter, set up in circular form, and covered with cedar bark. 10 Like t h e Eastern Shoshoni, the Ute Indians also advanced both materially and socially in the new land. Ironically, it was the intru- NATURAL HISTORY AND EARLY INHABITANTS 11 Looking west up Sheep Creek Canyon from Highway 44 south of Manila. ( Allan Kent Powell) sion of European civilization that brought these Indian cultures to their apex. As the Ute and Shoshoni nations moved into Utah, the empire of New Spain, bringing horses and trade goods, advanced 12 HISTORY OF DAGGETT COUNTY Daggett County Petroglyph. ( Utah State Historical Society) north from Mexico into the American Southwest. The result was an intense period of cultural dynamism and intertribal conflict. This activity reached the Flaming Gorge area with the introduction of European manufactures about 1550, and it ended with the begin­nings of permanent white settlement in the early 1840s. 11 Of all the things that the Europeans introduced to the Indians of the West, the horse proved to be the most revolutionary. The moun­tain Utes are believed to have acquired horses around 1650, and the Shoshoni acquired the animals perhaps fifty years later. Mounted bands of these people quickly took on traits associated with the Plains culture- particularly increased hunting and raiding activities due to their much greater mobility. Buffalo assumed great impor­tance as a source of food and raw material, and both tribes engaged in buffalo hunts east and west of the Rocky Mountains. Hide- covered teepees began to replace the traditional brush- covered wickiups, the size of bands increased, and more authority inured to head chiefs. Reminiscent of the Cheyenne and Sioux, the Kohogues, or Green River Snakes, developed two warrior societies. The Yellow Noses were a warrior group, while the Logs organized camp and formed a rear guard on the march. To the horror of traditional rivals, the mounted NATURAL HISTORY AND EARLY INHABITANTS 13 Ute and Shoshoni bands were also able to raid far into the homeland of their enemies. 12 Trapper Warren Angus Ferris penned this description of a large Shoshoni camp that he observed in 1830: Their village consisted of about one hundred and fifty lodges, and probably contained above four hundred fighting men. The lodges were placed close to each other, and taken together had much the appearance of a military camp. . . . We were obliged to carry clubs to beat off the numerous dogs, that were constantly annoying us by barking, and trying to bite our legs. Crowds of.. . children fol­lowed us from lodge to lodge, at each of which were seen . . . industrious women, employed in dressing skins, cutting meat into thin strips for drying, gathering fuel, cooking, or otherwise engaged in domestic labour. At every lodge, was a rack or frame, constructed of poles tied together, forming a platform, covered over with half- dried meat, which was curing over a slow fire. 13 Fortunately for the Ute and Shoshoni, Spanish expansion sput­tered on the borders of the Apache country. Catholic fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante explored the Uinta Basin and much of the Ute domain during their famed expedition of 1776, but no serious attempts at settlement fol­lowed. For the Shoshoni, contact with whites would not occur until their encounter with the Lewis and Clark expedition. At the close of the eighteenth century, the land that would become Daggett County was generally considered Shoshoni country. Both the Shoshoni and the Utes were flourishing. White men's horses, blankets, and ironware had brought a new material prosperity and increased leisure time. There was a flowering of the arts and spir­itual pursuits. But while New Spain's conquests had stalled in the Southwest, Britain and the young American republic continued to probe the unexplored regions of the continent. Their explorers, trappers, traders, and missionaries were traveling the inland waterways and pushing toward the Rocky Mountains. They brought more of the goods that the Indians wanted, but they also brought trouble and heartache in the form of smallpox, venereal disease, whiskey, and firearms. It was only a matter of time before white men would enter 14 HISTORY OF DAGGETT COUNTY the upper basin of the Green River, and this would not bode well for the native peoples of the Uinta Mountains. ENDNOTES 1. Atlas of Utah ( Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1981), 17, 31. 2. G. E. Untermann and B. R. Untermann, Field Guide to the Geology of the Uinta Mountains ( Salt Lake City: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey, 1961), 1; Stokes, Geology of Utah 145- 46. 3. Howard R. Ritzma, Geological Atlas of Utah: Daggett County ( Salt Lake City: Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey, 1959), 47. 4. Dick Dunham and Vivian Dunham. Flaming Gorge Country ( Denver: Eastwood Printing, 1978), 8- 9; Stokes, Geology of Utah, 146. 5. " Two Cultural Resource Studies for the Questar Pipeline Company Near Flaming Gorge Reservoir," report prepared for Bureau of Land Management, Rock Springs District, 1992, 13- 30. 6. Byron Loosle, Lora Broadbent, Lynne Ingram, " The Other Side of Life: Hunting with the Fremont"( unpublished paper presented at the 1st Rocky mountain Anthropological Conference in collection of Byron Loosle, 1993) 7. Kent C. Day and David S. Dibble, Archaeological Survey of the Flaming Gorge Reservoir Area Wyoming- Utah, University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 65 ( Upper Colorado Series No. 9 ( 1963), 1- 14, 39- 77. 8. Raymond W. Wood and Margot Liberty, eds., Anthropology on the Great Plains ( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 101- 3. 9. Virginia Trenholm and Maurine Carley, The Shoshonis: Sentinels of the Rockies ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), 27. 10. Harrison Clifford Dale, ed. The Ashley- Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific ( Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clarke, 1941), 87. 11. " Two Cultural Resource Studies," 32. 12. Trenholm, The Shoshonis, 30. 13. Warren Angus Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains ( Denver: Old West Publishing Co., 1940), 49.