BROWN'S PARK, Daggett County — If getting "far from the madding crowd" has its appeal, you couldn't get more pleasantly removed from the urban hurly-burly than Brown's Park, in extreme northwestern Colorado and "east-northern" Utah — that is, northeast of Vernal.
Just below the point on the map where the two states' border bumps into Wyoming, you'll find scattered ranches, from rustic ruins to contemporary cattle operations, dotting a hidden valley. And here the often-turbulent Green River, downstream from Flaming Gorge Dam, is meandering and pastoral.
Brown's Park is simply, for the most part, not on today's beaten track.
Originally known as "Brown's Hole," and said to be named for a French-Canadian trapper and early settler, Baptiste Brown (though there are other candidates, historians have noted), Green and Colorado river explorer John Wesley Powell liked the word "park" a little better in his writings, and it seems to have stuck.
You have to drive to Rock Springs, Wyo., or Flaming Gorge, to link up with the Brown's Park Road from the north via U.S. 191. (A fine new wide, though unpaved, road has been built just above the valley itself.) There is a paved road on the Colorado side, state Route 318, with a junction at Maybell, in Moffatt County, Colo., an hour-plus away on U.S. 40. Or there's the old back road Uinta Basin-to-Wyoming route from Vernal 65 miles to the south, via Jones Hole.
Despite its remoteness, 40-mile-long Brown's Park has much to offer. Campers, hikers, fishermen, bird- and wildlife-watchers, cyclists, hunters, river-runners and other enthusiasts can all find something of interest to do or see.
Perhaps the most persistent reminders of the modern world in today's Brown's Park, other than the unsurfaced roads through it, are ubiquitous poles and signs marking the routes of gas pipelines now wending their way from Wyoming and Utah's Clay Basin to the north, and over the Uinta Mountain passes to the south.
This is a valley with a long history, one that has witnessed Indian encampments (it was a winter favorite), mountain man gatherings, an early trading post (the 1830s ramshackle and long-vanished Fort Davy Crockett), and pioneer trading and homesteading.
It even saw early cattle drives, Diana Allen Kouris notes in her 1988 book "The Romantic and Notorious History of Brown's Park." We're most familiar with drives from Texas north after the Civil War (think of John Wayne in "Red River" and Robert Duvall in "Lonesome Dove"), but Brown's Park grasslands lured drovers thataway during the California gold rush, moving cattle to feed the forty-niners.
And in early Brown's Park peace, unfortunately, did not always hold sway, despite a live-and-let-live culture.
"The fabled Wild Bunch" — Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's gang — "and other outlaws used the park as a hideout and base of operations for years, and many are the tales of outlaw goings-on in the park, as well as stories about other eccentric residents," notes the 1982 revision of the Depression-era Works Projects Administration's "Utah: A Guide to the State."
In fact, the remaining major "wild west" centerpiece of Brown's Park, the John Jarvie National Historic Property on the valley's Utah side, bears witness to frontier violence.
Exactly a century ago, 65-year-old Scots immigrant John Jarvie, a valley rancher and entrepreneur for 39 years — owner of its store and post office, and operator of a Green River ferry — was murdered by desperados from Rock Springs, Wyo.
A marker at the historic site, which remembers and preserves Jarvie's home and way of life, summarizes the tragedy:
"John Jarvie died near this spot the evening of July 6th, 1909. Following a scuffle with two transients over money in his safe, Jarvie ran from the store to this point, where two bullets, one between his shoulder blades and one to his head, ended his life. His body was dragged by the heels and placed in a wooden boat on the Green River's edge. It was pushed into the current and eight days later, Jarvie and the boat were found tangled in willows 25 miles down river."
The killers are believed to have been George Hood, whom Jarvie had befriended, and Bill McKinley.
Jarvie was a leader on the local level, but his biography is not that of one of history's "great men," William L. Tennent noted in 1980 in "John Jarvie of Brown's Park."
Instead, "His story provides a picture of life as it existed for the common man in a frontier society," Tennent wrote, "a picture that modern men can easily relate to. The Jarvie story reveals much about the nature of life in Brown's Park, and the Brown's Park story reveals much about society on the frontier."
The Jarvie site, administered by the Bureau of Land Management, is part museum, part historic ranch, with a corral, blacksmith shop, antique equipment, an artifact-filled replica of his store/post office and two of his homes.
Jarvie's original home was a two-room dugout overlooking the Green River, where he and his young wife, Nellie, first lived. Step inside through the small doorway and you'll be surprised to see a tiny entryway with shelves and, even deeper into the river bluff, a cozy sitting area and bedroom.
Legend has it that the cavelike residence was later a hideout and meeting place for renegades along the fabled "Outlaw Trail," which Brown's Hole bestrides. Naturalist and writer Ann Zwinger, in "Run River Run," described the valley as "a more or less permanent hideout for many who found total honesty a personal encumbrance."
The Jarvies' permanent house, which is the site's museum and information stop, is a one-room stone structure "built by outlaw Jack Bennett, using masonry skills he learned in prison," according to the BLM's Web site. An agency brochure notes that Bennett — ironically nicknamed "Judge" — was later hanged for his part in a local murder.
Nearby is a wood-frame replica of Jarvie's general store, first built in 1881. The rail-tie wood walls (the original was built with ties that floated down the Green from railroad construction upstream) are lined with equipment favored by ranchers and horsemen, as well as shelves brimming with canned goods and other products of the era: men's hats, fabric, Log Cabin syrup, Sloan's Liniment.
The back of the room looks much like a post office today, with a wall of individual boxes for patrons.
The store also includes the original safe that was the target of Jarvie's killers — and which held a single $100 bill. That was a lot then, but certainly not enough to kill for, says site ranger Bob Massey. The murderers were never brought to justice, and they probably killed his son Jimmy, who had relentlessly pursued them into Idaho.
Jarvie, an educated man and musician (he played a small organ and concertina, historians say), was eulogized in the Vernal Express in late July 1909 as "the sage of the Uintas, the genius of Browns park. … He was not only a man among men, but he was a friend among men."
The Jarvie Historic Site is adjacent to two developed campgrounds, at Indian Crossing and Bridge Hollow, with 12 and 20 sites respectively. And there's always room to spare, Massey says.
Guided tours of the Jarvie property are available from May through September, but it is open year round, says Karen Bloom, public affairs officer for the BLM's Vernal field office.
The Jarvie ranch has a steady number of visitors in the high summer, she notes.
Massey's wife Jackie — a "volunteer" at the site where the Masseys have lived year-round for several years — says the guest book has logged 5,446 visitors since last October, when the current BLM fiscal year began, through August with one month left to add to that annual count. Plus, not everyone signs in, so the number is undoubtedly a little higher, she adds.
The busy months, of course, are in summer, with many visitors drawn to the campgrounds, Bob Massey says. In April this year, 131 people signed in, Jackie Massey says. The number jumped to 882 in May, 934 in June, 1,358 in July and 815 in August, she says.
Bloom says more than 500 folks visited during the Jarvie site's most recent annual Summer Festival, held on Father's Day each year. Among them were mountain men and cowboy poets, and there was an old-time dress-up photo contest as well, Bloom says. A Winter Festival is held the first Saturday of December, where cut Christmas trees are for sale, decorated by children.
"Winter is just amazing in Brown's Park, compared to the rest of the area," Bloom says. The valley is invitingly sheltered, mild and beautiful — an attraction discovered long ago by Indians, mountain men, cattle drives and ranchers.
Another nearby draw for visitors is the Browns Park National Wildlife Refuge, administered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, on the Colorado side of the valley.
Established in 1963, the refuge encompasses 13,455 acres, and provides grazing grounds for mule deer and elk, as well as a stopover for migrating birds, a phenomenon that peaks in late September or early October, according to the Wildlife Service.
Hunting and fishing are allowed, according to state and special federal regulations, and if you happen upon a traffic jam — which would be an exaggeration of the term — in Brown's Park, it might involve a few small boats on the Green River.
The refuge's unpaved but improved River's Edge Wildlife Drive offers outstanding views of the waterway, landscape and wildlife. Swallows dart about, hawks float on the thermals, and ducks and geese ply the ponds and river.
The drive has several pullouts and a few short side roads, as well as interpretive signs about the refuge and Brown's Park history.
One shows a photograph of Ann Bassett, the first white child born in the valley, in 1874, and later dubbed "Queen of the Cattle Rustlers" by a Denver newspaper.
"Ann grew into a strong-willed woman who ran her own ranch and socialized with outlaws, including Butch Cassidy," the marker says. "In the early 1900s, Ann defended her cattle operation against the Two Bar Ranch, a large company that tried to control Browns Park. Though charged twice for rustling Two Bar cattle, Ann was never convicted."
Remnants of the Two Bar, as well as the still-functional Lodore School and community center, are part of the refuge's eastern arm.
The refuge also has a visitor center/headquarters and two campgrounds, one beside the narrow, historic "Swinging Bridge" over the Green River.
Just to the east the Green abruptly flows smack into the mountains via the Gates of Ladore, named by Powell's exploration party in 1869 in reference to a poem by Robert Southey. Here, via a 7-mile side road, is a boat launch for adventurers headed into rougher white water, as well as a Dinosaur National Monument campground.
For eons, Brown's Park has proved a haven for wildlife, Indians, travelers, outlaws and ranchers. Many came to love it.
Indeed, it was "Queen Ann" Bassett who would write of her home valley that "every sagebrush, gulch and rock had a meaning of its own, and each blade of grass or scrubby cedar was a symphony."
If you go …
For more detailed information about Brown's Park and its colorful history, track down Diana Allen Kouris' tale-filled 1988 book, "The Romantic and Notorious History of Brown's Park." Kouris grew up on a valley ranch, and her book is based in part upon the notes and anecdotes gathered by her mother, Marie Taylor Allen.
Other sources can be found on the Web, including the BLM site, www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/vernal/recreation_/browns_park.html, and an insightful 1980 monograph by William L. Tennent, at the National Park Service address www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blm/ut/7/foreword.htm
Additional information about the John Jarvie Historic Property is available by contacting the Bureau of Land Management, Vernal Field Office, 170 S. 500 East, Vernal, UT 84078; phone: (435) 781-4400. The site ranger's number is (435) 885-3307. Guided tours are available daily, May through September, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. From October through April, the hours are the same but the buildings are not open on Sunday and Monday. The site hosts two campgrounds, Bridge Hollow and Indian Crossing.
Information about the Browns Park National Wildlife Refuge can be obtained by calling 1-800-344-WILD; through the refuge offices, at (970) 365-3613; or on the Web at brownspark.fws.gov. The refuge is open daily from sunrise to sunset (except at its round-the-clock campgrounds). The refuge office is open from 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday through Friday, except on federal holidays.
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