num_pages: 240
description: Before Canyonlands was a national park, the lands west of the Colorado and Green Rivers to the San Rafael Swell and from the Book Cliffs and San Rafael River south to the Dirty Devil River and the Henry Mountains were pastures for the stock of hardscrabble cowboys and sheepmen. Often based in the nearby villages of Green River or Hanksville, sometimes residing on remote ranches, such as the famous Robbers Roost Ranch or the Chaffin Ranch at the mouth of the San Rafael, they spent much of their time camped out on the range with their stock. They named many of the places; opened many of the trails; were there to meet and guide the first petroleum explorers, archeologists, and tourists; and struggled with increasing government regulation of the public lands they had grown accustomed to considering their own.Surviving members of the last generation of these cowboys have restored contact and hold reunions. Richard Negri interviewed many of these men and women for stories of their early days in the canyon country. He compiled their tales into a collective oral history of the first non-Indians to take up residence in the western segments of what are now Canyonlands National Park and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and in much of the surrounding, still wild and remote country.
language: English
title: Tales of Canyonlands Cowboys
titlecomplete: Tales of Canyonlands Cowboys (Western Experience)
genres: Nonfiction
ratings_count: 10
publisher: Utah State University Press