THE WAR ON OUR FEDERAL LANDS

Red sandstone mesa straight out of the Old West in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

President Obama had a long process of consideration and public meetings and cooperation with five Indian tribes in creating Bear’s Ears National Monument. Trump and his henchman, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, ripped all that up with inflamatory rhetoric and caving to local interests who want to cut open the land, encouraging uranium mining, coal mining, and oil and gas drilling. Local people have a long history of looting ancient Indian graves and archaeological sites, and want to keep our American lands as their own personal playground.

The latest proposal for Bears Ears is to split it into two separate and much smaller national monuments, to be called the Indian Creek National Monument and Shash Jaa National Monument. These would reduce the total national monument land that has been protected by the Bears Ears proclamation by 85%–a devastating loss to those of us who love our national lands.

These photographs were taken during a few magical days in October of 2017, and show the Indian Creek National Monument lands that will still be preserved. And thank God that they will, at least until there is a big discovery of uranium or coal under the surface. This is an iconic landscape of the American West, with its sweeping valleys, high sandstone mesas, and evidence of early Indian occupation.

At the end of SR 211, the road leading through Indian Creek Valley to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park and immediately outside the park entrance, there was a one square mile section of land owned by the State of Utah. This was put up for auction to the highest bidder early in 2017. There was a possibility that it could have ended up in the hands of a mining corporation or a big developer, thus ruining the Old West feel of the entire valley. We dodged a bullet when the highest bid came from Jennifer Speers, a Salt Lake City environmentalist and philanthropist who vowed to keep the land as it is.

The State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in 2012, which called upon the federal government to transfer most of its lands in Utah to the state. This hasn’t happened, of course, but it could, if Satan’s stars align. If this occurs, vast sections of the state could be sold off to developers, ranchers, miners, drillers and other private interests, which would make the state rich, but would make the rest of us poorer as we lose our Western Heritage of vast lands available for the soul and body to explore.

Remember Edward Abbey’s rallying cry: Hayduke Lives! If the worst comes to pass, many among us will become Hayduke.

North Six Shooter Peak with its talus cone, a favorite tower climing destination in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Utah SR 211 winding through the canyons of Indian Creek, along the Indian Creek Corridor Scenic Byway, in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, on the way to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park in southern Utah, USA

Red sandstone mesa straight out of the Old West in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Red sandstone mesa straight out of the Old West in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Autumn Fremont Cottonwoods, Populus fremontii, with sandstone mesas, in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Wooden aquaduct that may have been part of uranium exploration in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Beef Basin Road running through Beef Basin’s autumn Fremont Cottonwoods, Populus fremontii, with sandstone formations, in or near Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Autumn Fremont Cottonwoods, Populus fremontii, with North and South Six Shooter Peaks, in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Beef Basin, in (or near) Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Utah SR 211 winding through the canyons of Indian Creek, along the Indian Creek Corridor Scenic Byway, in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, on the way to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park in southern Utah, USA

Autumn Fremont Cottonwoods, Populus fremontii, with sandstone mesas, in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Petroglyphs at Newspaper Rock in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Animal or human track petroglyphs made by Ute People at Newspaper Rock in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Deer petroglyphs made by Ute People at Newspaper Rock in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Petroglyphs at Newspaper Rock in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA. Note the bullet hole left by a local yahoo.

Petroglyphs at Newspaper Rock in Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Historic corral for cattle grazing in what is now Indian Creek National Monument, formerly part of Bears Ears National Monument, southern Utah, USA

Resources:

Hayduke Lives!

Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act

Jennifer Speers Buys Land Near Canyonlands National Park

High Country News about Trump’s slashing of Bears Ears

 

The Ghost of Bodie Past

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The ghost of Bodie occasionally appears in a window..

Please allow me to introduce myself:  my name is Boots McGee.  I was hanged by a mob in Bodie back in 1883.  They broke down the door of the jail, shoved the sheriff aside, and yanked me out of the cell.  Then they carried me kicking and screaming to the headframe for the Red Cloud Mine and used a horse to string me up by the neck.  I died choking and gasping two minutes later.

The thing is, I didn’t shoot Doc Smith that night in the Yellow Dog Tavern.  The real killer was a one-armed man who was good with a gun in his remaining hand, and he shot Doc when everyone else had dived under the tables.  But Doc, with his dying words, said that he saw me with the smoking gun.  If Doc hadn’t delivered so many babies and treated so many liver ailments, people might not have believed him.  But here I was, a down on my luck miner who was drunk on rotgut that night, and someone heard me threaten Doc because he charged me too much for removing a bullet from my butt.  So here I am.

We ghosts don’t really like to hang around; after all, there is a sweet afterlife that we would like to spend eternity in.  But some of us get stuck in a place and time and can’t get out.  It has something to do with the unfairness of the act that killed us.  If only I could turn back time.  But I can’t, so for now I float down from the graveyard on the hill with the cool night air.  If you see my shape in a dark window, or hear a door creak on a still morning when nobody is around, that would be me.  And I’ll probably be here for as long as the last weathered boards remain on the Methodist Church and as long as the last granite headstone remains in the graveyard.

I might as well tell you a bit about my little town.  Gold was discovered in these hills by Waterman S. Bodey back in 1859.  I came in the gold rush that

Bodie sits below the hills where the gold came from..

followed, and staked a claim up in the hills east of town.  I dug some gold early on and made some money, enough that I could visit the taverns every night, Lottie’s house of red lights on Saturday night, and the Methodist Church on Sunday mornings.  Well, maybe a few Sunday mornings, anyway.

By 1879, the town had grown to 10,000 people and had a reputation as a hellhole filled with drunks and prostitutes and outlaws.  But a lot of gold was coming out of the ground from all the mines, so people put up with all the evil.  One man of God, the Reverend F. M. Warrington called our town “a sea of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion.”  Sounds like my kind of place, doesn’t it?

All good and evil things eventually come to an end, and Bodie’s end came soon after the last mine shut down in 1941.  Without a reason to go on, the town emptied out completely.  People left old belongings in their homes, and the school’s hundreds of desks were left as if ghost students still took their daily lessons.

The creaking front door of the Tom Miller house..

I was lonely here for a long time, with just occasional curious folks and vandals visiting this remote place.  But in 1962, the great state of California made my home town a state historic park that is kept in a state of “arrested decay.”  Now I have lots of visitors to haunt, so the only times I get lonely are during the long and frigid winters, when only a few folks on skis and snowmobiles make it up here.

It looked like I would never leave this place, since California has been preventing Bodie from disappearing back into the earth.  But in 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger put Bodie on a list of state parks to shut down because the state has run out of money to keep parks open.  That is my best hope for getting out of here.  If the state allows Bodie to fall apart and blow away, I might finally get to see heaven because I’ll have nowhere to stay here on earth.

The Methodist Church reflected in the windows of a doorway..

A child’s coffin in the town’s morgue..

Streetscape of weathered buildings in Bodie..

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Without a little propping up, these outhouses would have blown down in the cold wind.

The Standard Mill processed millions of dollars of gold..

The Methodist Church, built in 1882, held its last service in 1932..

The owner of the town’s morgue slept in an adjacent room..

Layers of paint speak to fashions and time passing..

Reflections on the front door windows of the Pat Reddy house..

A billiards table waits for ghostly players in the old Wheaton & Hollis Hotel..

Togetherness reigned in the Kirkwood House two-hole outhouse..

Steel shingles in attractive rusty shades cover some of Bodie’s exterior walls..

Display windows of the Boone Store and Warehouse reflect the setting..

The interior of the Boone Store & Warehouse has original artifacts on display..

Table in the Tom Miller house set for guests who never came..

A 1927 Dodge Graham truck waits for a fill-up at the Shell gas pumps..

A deer head has survived the decades in the Wheaton & Hollis Hotel..

Before a major fire, Bodie was 20 times as large..

The Swazey Hotel awaits visitors from the past..

Lace curtains add a feminine touch to the Murphy house..

James Stuart Cain, a wealthy businessman, had a beautiful house..

The Wheaton & Hollis Hotel is a classic false front commercial building..

If you want to visit Bodie, there are some good websites to help plan your trip and learn a bit of real history (as opposed to my made-up history!) of this wonderful ghost town.

http://www.bodie.com/

http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=509

To see my web site, which includes photographic prints for sale, please go to LeeRentz.com

To see thousands of my photographs in large file sizes for use in magazines or other printed materials or electronic media, go to my PhotoShelter Website