Where I’m going, Part Four.

   

 Way out in the far northeastern corners of Utah and northwestern Colorado, just south of the Wyoming border, a lonely valley stretches along the Green River: Brown’s Park, or Brown’s Hole if you prefer. Nowadays, it is a far piece from anywhere and not all that easy to get to. But it was a well-traveled place in the Old West.
    For time out of mind, it was frequented by the Shoshoni, Ute, and Comanche. Blackfoot, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Navajo also visited. Fur trappers set up shop there in the 1830s, and Fort Davy Crockett opened up to supply and defend them in 1837. Ranchers followed the mountain men, wintering cattle there as well as establishing ranches.
    One of those ranches spawned Ann and Josie Bassett, who collaborated with cattle rustlers, horse thieves, robbers, and other bandits who made Brown’s Hole an outpost on the Outlaw Trail that ran from Robber’s Roost to the south and Hole in the Wall to the north. Among the most renowned outlaws who hid out there were Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch and, later, the fugitive Tom Horn.
    Despite an enduring desire to go there, I have yet to set foot in Brown’s Park. One of these days…