Charlie Percell has collected newspaper articles and pictures from last summer's fugitive manhunt in the Four Corners region and carefully placed them in a scrapbook.
The proprietor of the Cadillac Ranch RV Park in Bluff, she gladly shares those mementos with any visitor who asks.And they often ask.
"When they ask, I just give 'em the scrapbook and let them look. I've got a picture of the FBI, 'cause they were set up right across the street," she said.
What the pictures don't show, however, is the revenue lost by Bluff's 27 businesses in the wake of the widely publicized search for two Colorado men police believe shot and killed an officer and then hid in the Four Corners wilderness.
The manhunt started May 29, when Cortez, Colo., police officer Dale Claxton was allegedly shot and killed by Robert Mason, Alan Monte Pilon and Jason McVean. The three men then led police on a chase west and south across Utah to the Bluff area.
On July 4, officers found Mason, 28, dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound shortly after he shot and wounded a San Juan County sheriff's deputy. That forced a two-day evacuation of Bluff and closures of all roads in and out of the little tourist community. The fugitives were never arrested.
Percell estimates she lost about $6,000 in business.
"We lost quite a bit for about two months," said Percell, who has owned the business some 20 years. "But September and October were great, so we survived. Actually there were some people who stopped here just because they said they'd seen me on TV.
The notoriety of the manhunt brings both good news and bad, it seems.
Mostly, it brought devastation for business owners, said Howard Brundage, owner of the Cottonwood Steakhouse and president of the local business association. Some businesses fared better than others, he notes.
Some 250,000 people annually visit Bluff, which is about 25 miles north of the Arizona border in an area rich with Anasazi ruins and beautiful high desert scenery. It is popular for hiking and river rafting and is near to all of southern Utah's national parks.
"We were down many, many, many thousands of dollars," said Brundage, who is the head chef at his restaurant and in fair weather uses an outdoor barbecue just off the main highway into town. "The traffic just wasn't there. I'm out there. I could see it."
Nor was there any help from state officials, he said. Early promises that the region might get some financial breaks haven't materialized. So far, the only help has been $500 from the San Juan County office of economic development.
"We used that for a brochure that we circulated up north around Monticello and the like to try to get people to come down, but we've had very little success with that," Brundage said.
The busy fall months have helped recoup some of the estimated $75,000 loss at the Twin Rocks Trading Post, but travelers seem to have long memories when it comes to the summer manhunt.
"They still ask about it. They want to know what happened and if (the suspects) were ever caught. But I don't think they're as concerned about it as they once were," he said. "It isn't keeping them away. At the time, (tourists) had well-founded concerns."
Simpson thinks business might have bounced back sooner if the fugitives had been caught.
Others wonder if they were ever in the area at all.
"But there's nothing you can do but deal with it," Simpson said.
Percell has no particular theories about where the fugitives might be, although she is philosophical about the experience, which she says brought the Bluff community together in new ways."
"Down here, we are survivors, we will all make it," she said. "It was an experience, I will tell you for sure, but I think sometimes these things are a little reminder that some of this piddly stuff we worry about isn't so important. What they did . . . that was horrible. But now that it's over, we kind of chuckle."
Except, whenever a helicopter flies overhead.
"Every time we hear it, we all just gulp," she said. "And then I think, oh no, not again."