One Dusty Track

Postcard from the Cowboy Cemetery

The two men worked for W. G. S. Hughes and his wife, Sarah. They were riding to fix a broken section of fence on the remote central Texas ranch when they found him. When they found his body anyway. Nobody knew his name or where he came from. He had no wallet, no papers, nothing to tell who he was. He had been shot once in the chest and now he lay dead under a large oak tree, his un-branded horse quietly grazing just a few feet away. The men buried him where he lay, a flat rock placed at the head of the shallow grave. It would be the only mark of his passing. If he had friends or family they would never know what happened to him, but this lonesome, wandering cowboy would have a cemetery named in his remembrance.

Later, in 1882, W.G.S. and Sarah's 4-year-old son, William, died and they donated 2 acres of their ranch at the cowboy's burial spot, 1 acre for a cemetery and 1 acre for a school. They named the burial ground Cowboy Cemetery after the unknown cowboy buried there, and the school became the Cowboy School. Within a few years the population on the surrounding ranches had grown enough that dances were being held in the school building and a post office was opened. The building and cemetery became the focal point of the area and unofficially became known as Cowboy Town.

In 1930, with the need for a larger building and more teachers, the Cowboy School merged with the Rochelle school and the post office was eliminated. In 1932, Sarah took back the 1 acre where the school building had been and in turn donated another 33.5 acres around the cemetery which had run out of space for additional burials. A committee, called the Cowboy Cemetery Association, was formed to oversee the maintenance and operation of the cemetery.

Today, Cowboy Cemetery contains the graves of Mr. & Mrs. Hughes, their four children and numerous family members as well as many of the original settlers of the area and their descendants. The large number of graves for babies and young children indicate just how hard life was on this Texas prairie in the 1800's. Also buried here is Texas Border Patrol Agent Jefferson Barr who was killed by drug smugglers on the Texas border in 1996.

Cowboy Cemetery is one of the most pleasant, well-maintained cemeteries in all of rural Texas. Inside the rock fence enclosure is a small chapel and a working windmill which furnishes water for the many lantana bushes and trees. Of the 375 graves, 347 are identified. One of the unidentified is that lonesome cowboy whose name was never known and whose grave is now lost as well.

Postcard From Dead Horse Point

Yes, that is droppings from an obviously live horse at the
entrance to Dead Horse Point Park. Sometimes you find
the picture and sometimes the picture finds you.

32 miles outside of Moab, Utah is Dead Horse Point State Park. The park is 5,362 acres of isolated high desert with breathtaking views overlooking Canyonlands National Park and the Colorado River. The view from Dead Horse Point is one of the most photographed in the world and was used in the movie Thelma and Louis as the spot where they drove over the edge of the Grand Canyon instead of filming the actual Grand Canyon as the view was more spectacular.

From the lookout point at the end of a narrow neck of land, you can see layers of ground representing 300 million years of earth's history. Look down the vertical walls of rock to the valley floor over 2,000 feet down. From the same spot you can look out and see the snow topped La Sal Mountains rising 12,000 feet.

In the 1800's, cowboys used this narrow finger of land sticking out over the valley for capturing wild horses. Fanning out in a u-shape, they would chase the animals onto the point and then block off any escape by piling up brush & dead tree's across the narrow neck of the plateau which is only 30 yards wide. This formed a 40-acre natural corral and the cowboys could then cull out the best horses for breaking and eventual ranch use. The old, young and small-in-stature mustangs (called "broomtails") would be left behind to find their way back into the wild.

The Colorado River 2,000 feet below the point

In the late 1800's, a large herd of wild horses were driven to the point and the "gate" of brush and dead tree's was put in place. For some unknown reason, several hundred horses were trapped on the point and kept circling and circling until they died of thirst. They could see the Colorado River with its life-sustaining water, but it was 2,000 feet straight down. Nobody seems to know the reason the horses were trapped - some say a sudden storm came up causing the cowboys to leave with the intention of coming back but for some reason never did; some say the cowboys got lazy, left only a narrow path through the "gate" when they departed and the remaining horses became confused and couldn't find the small opening. Whatever the reason, the name "Dead Horse Point" came about when several riders found hundreds of horse skeletons on the waterless point of the plateau, scattered in and about a large circle of hardened ground where they kept on the move looking for a way to get to the water until, one by one, they fell exhausted and died.

Postcard From Utah

One of my favorite roads in Utah

Having traveled in every state in the U.S. except Alaska (on my bucket list), other than my native Texas, one of my favorite places is Utah. The 10th least densely populated state, it is home to only about 3 million folks and the vast majority of those reside in and around Salt Lake City. That leaves the rest of the state to small towns, open spaces and long stretches of road winding through some of the most wild an beautiful landscape you will ever see.

While Utah has the wooded mountains of the Wasatch Range and the Unita Mountains with their snow-capped peaks rising over 13,500', the region I prefer is the scenic southern and southeastern area's with its rugged, stark landscapes of weathered sandstone. Here is where National Parks such as Bryce, Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef and Zion can be found. There are also numerous state parks such as Dead Horse Point and Monument Valley.

Best of all are the seemingly hundreds of remote hiking trails where you can go for hours without seeing another person; where you can be awed and totally transfixed by the power of nature and its beauty; where you can be standing in a shallow, gurgling stream of crystal clear water in between two sheer canyon walls rising hundreds of feet and feel as if you are nothing more than a little ant lucky to live on this amazing planet. You don't need to go to a huge, beautiful but impersonal cathedral with stained-glass windows and it doesn't have to be on a Sunday morning, stop and look, stop and listen, this is where you meet God.