Finding The Long Lost Moab Burro in Cisco, Utah 2020

In May 2013, I discovered a strange beast resting on a railroad siding at Seven Mile, near the intersection of U.S. Highway 191 and Utah State Route 313. The location was just a few miles north of the infamous Moab Pile, the adjacent Colorado River and the City of Moab itself. The beast was a dusky yellow in color and had an enormously long snout. Since the Moab Giants Dinosaur Park did not yet exist, I knew that the beast could not be from there or the Jurassic Period.

Later, I discovered that the beast was not a cold-blooded animal, but a genetically engineered hybrid. In the 1950s, whoever or whatever created the beast had crossed the DNA of a burro and a crane. With its proximity to the highly radioactive Moab Pile, I suspected that radionuclides might have enhanced the new animal with enormous strength and power.

After some extensive research, I discovered that the beast now featured a diesel engine and a lattice-boom crane, which could include a powerful electromagnet. Its creators had branded the beast on its stern with the words, “Burro Crane.” This version of the beast was a Model 40, originally created by the Cullen Friestedt Company near Chicago, Illinois. Enthralled by the nature of the beast, I knew that I needed more information.

By 2015, the Moab Burro, as I had dubbed it, had disappeared from its former location on the siding at Seven Mile. Over the following five years, I worked incessantly toward a PhD in Burro Crane Studies at the University of Google. My doctoral thesis hypothesized that Burro Cranes had obtained the ability to shape-shift from large to small and to dematerialize and rematerialize in different locations. Although the Google elite had accepted my concepts as entirely possible, they suggested that I obtain physical evidence before conferring the honor of a PhD on me.

In the year 2020, I embarked on a research expedition to Moab, Utah. There, I was hoping to find the erstwhile and long-lost Moab Burro. If I could find the Moab Burro Crane, I could prove my thesis and obtain my long sought after Google PhD. When I pulled into Seven Mile, the siding was still there, but the Moab Burro was, once again, nowhere in sight. Having brought Coney, the Traffic Cone and Plush Kokopelli with me for our long-awaited reunion with the Moab Burro, you can imagine how disappointed each of us were.

With nothing to see at Seven Mile, we decided to return toward Moab on Highway 191. Having heard that various republicans had repeatedly shut down Arches National Park, just for spite, Coney, Kokopelli and I decided to turn in at the Arches National Park entrance and see for ourselves. Once again, uncaring politicians had closed the park for no good reason. When we stopped for a photo opportunity, a group of tourists showed up right behind us. With the speed of a flash mob, Kokopelli led them into some Monkey Wrench action, all in the best spirit of Edward Abbey. Before we knew it the tourists had opened Arches National Park... for the people.

Almost immediately, we found ourselves coughing through a nuclear dust cloud emanating from the remnants of the Moab Pile. As the dust cleared, we crossed the river on the “new” Colorado River Bridge. Once we were across the bridge, we turned left at the remnants of Old Lion’s Club Park. The original park stood on the spot where the 1855 Elk Mountain Mission first camped on the Moab-side of what was then called the Grand River. Stately cottonwood trees that may have shaded the Mormon missionaries at their first campground disappeared on March 31, 2015. Instead, uncaring souls who gave not a hoot for history or the park had transformed the quaint old park into an overheated series of concrete paths and bunker-shaped buildings. So much for progress, I thought.

Continuing our journey up the Colorado Riverway, I soon came to another historical location, which had signs reading “William Grandstaff Trailhead.” To an uninitiated visitor in 2020, the name was colorless, and not descriptive in any way. For those who know their Moab history, the place had once been known as “Negro Bill Trailhead” for many decades. William Granstaff, AKA Negro Bill was one of the early pioneers at Moab. Bill ran cattle in the box canyon that later bore his name. On September 27, 2016, the all-knowing BLM Moab Field Office “pulled a fast one”. In the grand tradition of destroying old Lion’s Club Park, the BLM made a stealthy move. Overnight, and without warning, the BLM changed out the historical “Negro Bill Trailhead” signage and all the road signs referencing the site. Goodbye Negro Bill. Hello William Grandstaff.

By that time, Coney, Plush Kokopelli and I were all feeling uneasy. If the authorities in and around Moab could hide, disguise, or make history disappear so easily, how might we ever find the missing Moab Burro? Although Coney has uttered a few words, Plush Kokopelli has never said a word in all his 2,000 years of existence. Respecting that tradition, we drove silently, with Cisco, Utah as our destination.

Along the way, we spotted the remains of the old Dewey Bridge, once the longest continuous single span between St. Louis and San Francisco. Although replaced with a newer concrete bridge over the river, the historic Dewey Bridge stood proud for over a century, until it was destroyed by fire in April 2008. That happened during a classic case of a child playing with matches nearby. His “science project” got away from him and rapidly burned the wooden bridge-deck of the old suspension bridge. Once a treasure on the National Register of Historic Places, passing by we could see the support cables dangling in the sky, with no bridge-deck to support.

After traversing that long and winding road known as Highway 128, we transitioned to The Old Cisco Highway and into Cisco, itself. We were not prepared for what had happened in town since our last visit in 2008. In those days, Cisco was a ghost town, without a single operating business and only a few aging cottages showing signs of life. Derelict mining and drilling equipment, some dating back to the uranium boom days of the 1950s lay abandoned all around the place. The shell of a long-abandoned aluminum house trailer still shone in the desert sun.

And then we saw it. There before us was the Moab Burro, with the number B-47 painted on its fading yellow sides. In shock, we saw that the Moab Burro was chained to an unused railroad siding near the old highway. Immediately, we jumped out of my truck and ran for a visit with our old friend, the Moab Burro. From its former resting place on the Potash Branch at Seven Mile to its 2020 home was a rail journey of about forty miles. How long had the Moab Burro been at the old Cisco siding, we wondered? How long would it be in Cisco until it rode the rails to a new destination or transported itself through other dimensions to wherever it pleased?

Now, in August 2024, having achieved my Google PhD in Burro Crane studies, I am planning another visit to Moab and Cisco, Utah in October 2024. Recently, I used the powers of Google maps to look at that railroad siding in Cisco. According to the most rent aerial mapping of the area, the Moab Burro is gone. Only its tender car remained on the siding where the Moab Burro lay in 2020. Stay tuned to find out if and where we might soon find the elusive Moab Burro.

To read the full story of the Moab Burro, click HERE.

Email James McGillis

Drought & Exploitation Threaten the Flow of Two Major Rivers - 2013

 

From Las Cruces, New Mexico to Moab, Utah, Drought & Exploitation Threaten the Flow of Two Major Rivers

On May 20, 2013, I visited Canyonlands by Night & Day, along the Colorado River at Moab, Utah. Although the Colorado spread from bank to bank, I would not have guessed that as I watched, the river crested. Only afterwards did I hear from a local resident that the river had crested that day in Moab. Although the drying environment in the High Southwest is obvious, for a while that day I believed that the river was still rising.

When I arrived at the dock, the evening river tours were still hours away. On that lazy afternoon down by the river, I found the place almost deserted. As I roamed the promenade above the river, no other humans appeared. As I looked down, I could see water rushing past the dock. The water was swift, turbulent and cold. Anyone falling into that torrent would have quickly drowned.

Looking upstream at the U.S. Hwy. 191 Colorado River Bridge, I could see high water marks well above the observed water level. After studying stream flow data from the Cisco Water Resources Station, operated upstream by the U.S. Geological Survey, I uncovered the story. Only two years prior, the Colorado River crested in Cisco, Utah on June 9, 2011. That day, the discharge was at almost 50,000 cfs, with a gauge height of over sixteen feet.

It was on that day that the Colorado River flooded the lower reaches of the Moab UMTRA Superfund site. The flood destroyed a new riverside bicycle path and lapped at the edges of the toxic, nuclear waste dump commonly known as the Moab Pile. Despite a documented paleo-flood history of far greater floods, the wizards of the UMTRA cleanup world had elected not to protect the nuclear waste dump from increased river flow.

At Cisco, on the afternoon of May 20, 2013 the Colorado River temperature hit a mean low point of about 58 f degrees. Discharge, (measured in cubic feet per second) peaked at 12,500 cfs on the prior afternoon. The flow rate held at around 12,000 cfs on May 20, and then fell steadily to 6900 cfs by May 24.

Perusing the excellent database available at the USGS website, I was able to select data from any recent timeframe. Over the 94-year history of the Cisco gauge, I found that the Colorado River averaged 20,000 cfs throughout the May 19 – May 25 period. Several days after my 2013 visit, the discharge rate at Cisco stood at only thirty-five percent of average. With Moab being downstream from Cisco, we can extrapolate a one-day delay for all Moab statistics. Thus, as I watched, the river crested in Moab on the afternoon of May 20.

Almost one year prior, the river crested on May 25, 2012 at just over 4000 cfs. Between the two years, average flow at the crest of the spring flood in Moab was less than twenty-eight percent of the ninety-four year average. During my October 6, 2012 excursion on the Canyonlands by Night and Day Dine & Unwind dinner tour, a river depth of eighteen inches prevented our boat from traveling more than a mile upstream. Near the riverbanks, the air smelled of rotting plants and other undesirable effects of low water. On that tour, the discharge rate of the river at Moab stood at forty-two percent of the long-term average.

The main water sources for the Upper Colorado River Basin are myriad mountain streams and the small rivers that they feed. As we know from archeological evidence, by 1000 CE the Colorado Plateau had entered into a protracted and severe drought. By 1300 CE, not one human remained alive within the confines of the Colorado Plateau. The devastation brought by drought, overpopulation and internecine warfare had driven everyone from that former land of plenty.

Although there was no single event that caused the Great (Anasazi) Disappearance, misuse of natural resources played a major role. With their penchant for building grand, wood-beamed kivas and multifamily dwellings, Pre-Puebloan cultures within the Colorado Plateau denuded huge swathes of the land. Eroded wastelands created by their handiwork are still visible on satellite photos of the area. The Chaco River in Chaco Canyon is a perfect example. Major parts of the Chaco River watershed are parched and rutted.

It was only five years ago that I first heard dire, scientific predictions of prolonged drought in the Four Corner States of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Today, Western U.S. drought maps show unprecedented environmental distress prevailing in parts of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado. Somewhere between the headwaters of the Rio Grande River in Northeastern New Mexico and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma is the vortexual center of the Great Western Drought.

Not coincidentally, that area has seen the longest-standing overgrazing of cattle anywhere in the U.S. What once were rolling grasslands now support only scrub and mesquite. Facing starvation of their bedraggled herds, ranchers are now removing cattle from those public lands. As drought destroys all but the heartiest plant life, scientists tell us that the grasslands are unlikely to recover.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times chronicled the devastating effects of drought throughout the Rio Grande Valley. While New Mexico’s venerable Elephant Butte Reservoir stands at only three percent of its 1980’s levels, the State of Texas is suing New Mexico for pumping too much of its own groundwater.

Whether legal or not, the extensive pumping of groundwater for irrigation and household use is causing the Rio Grande to recede underground. In the near future, the flowing river may disappear entirely from the surface of the land. Near Las Cruces, New Mexico, pictures show families with young children wading barefoot across the Rio Grande. Each day, the rivulets contract, leaving a relative trickle in the river as it bends toward, El Paso, Texas.

Split by the U.S. Continental Divide, the Rio Grande Valley and the Colorado Plateau are two separate, yet adjacent watersheds. With their close geographical proximity, the environmental problems experienced in each are different only by degree. Gripped by drought, the Rio Grande Valley is a harbinger of a bleak future for the adjacent Colorado Plateau. As the Anasazi overused their lands and natural resources, so too are we.

In less than one year, the first tar-sands extraction-solvents will enter the Colorado River watershed at a Book Cliffs mine near Moab. Uintah County and the State of Utah are eager to facilitate planned destruction within the Book Cliffs landscape. As proof, Uintah County is using public money to pave the aptly named “Seep Ridge Road” from Interstate I-70, all the way to the strip mine. Every drop of tar sands oil-sludge coming from that mine will move by truck or rail to refineries elsewhere in the country. Requiring huge inputs of energy at the mine, plus shipping and refining costs well above that of traditional oil extraction, the strip mining of tar sands in the Utah desert is a game of diminishing returns. In the alchemy of turning solid rock into oil, we consume so much energy that only an unwitting or cynical investor would see value in light of such widespread environmental destruction. Just because we can turn rock into oil does not mean that we should.

Recent state and federal approvals for mineral extraction in the Moab area include a new hydraulic (in-situ) potash mine in Dry Valley near Canyonlands National Park. Its industrial facilities may soon be visible from the now pristine Anticline Overlook. Elsewhere, near Moab, oil and gas leases spring to life in unexpected and environmentally sensitive locations, such as Dead Horse Point. If the land is not within a designated national or state park, almost every acre is fair game for mining.

During my May 2013 visit to Moab, I found what appeared to be a clandestine oil-shale strip mine. Hidden by a butte from the Valley City Road, only a wrong turn on a new, unmarked dirt road took me to that place. Located near the southern rim of the Salt Valley, the mine and its access road do not appear on any map. As the crow flies, the mine exists only a few miles from the southern boundary of Arches National Park. Nowhere could I find a corporate name, road sign or scrap of paper indicating who was digging into the previously untouched land.

It is with boundless energy and enthusiasm that mining, petrochemical and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) interests have rammed mining and drilling applications through a broken process. Despite the efforts of environmental groups to publicize this slow-motion rape of Southeastern Utah, new plans continue for a water-lift and hydroelectric plant on the Colorado River near Moab. Although rarely making more than regional news, a Nuclear Power Plant at Green River, Utah will soon break ground. Not since the Uranium Boom of the 1950s has Emery, Grand or Uintah County seen such levels of unchecked mineral exploration and exploitation.

As the result of unchecked extraction and processing in the 1950s, the Moab UMTRA Superfund site still faces decades of publicly financed cleanup. Yet today, we set in motion myriad water wasting or aquifer destroying projects in the desert. Any single mineral extraction or power-producing project may look good to investors or consumers. However, when taken as a whole, the Colorado Plateau and its namesake river may soon follow the Rio Grande River to a point of no return.

In matters of drought and depopulation, we must concede that the Pre-Puebloan (Ancients) were the real experts. In the High Southwest, if we stop and listen, the Spirit of the Ancients is all around us. In the end, through overuse of natural resources, the Ancients helped change their weather cycle toward hotter and dryer. Today, drill rigs, gas compression sites and diesel equipment of every variety pollute both water and air, drowning out the Ancients’ warning cries.

Over a two-day period during my July 2013 visit to Moab, the monsoon unleashed torrents of rain. Water visibly eroded the ground at the Moab Rim Campark, where I stayed. Still, when compared to the deep snowfields that once lingered into summer in the high country; these thunderstorms produced a mere drop in the bucket. Wondering how the Moab Pile might have fared under such a sudden deluge, I went to see for myself. Although the UMTRA Moab site is now six million tons lighter and smaller than it was five years ago, erosion channels marked its sides. Was that runoff of toxic and nuclear waste contained in catch basins or did it run directly into the Colorado River?

While looking across the Moab Pile toward the Moab Rim, I saw a huge face in the rocky crust of the canyon wall. After a few moments, I realized that successful removal of six million tons of contaminated soil allowed me to see the Ancient Spirit of Moab from that spot. Locked in stone for half of eternity, he seemed to say, “Remember those who lived here long before. Learn to respect the land and its resources. If you do not, you too shall experience a devastated landscape, unfit for human habitation”.

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By James McGillis at 04:55 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

An Afternoon By The Colorado River - 2008

An Afternoon By The Colorado River

On Saturday, May 24, 2008, I traveled west and north from Hovenweep National Monument to Moab, Utah, a distance of 120 miles.  Once I got past the ancient Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) roads, the trip north on US Highway 191 was easy, even with while towing my travel trailer.

 

Arriving at the Moab Rim Campark, just south of Moab a day earlier than expected I found that there was no RV space available that night in all of Moab.  Thinking that the remote Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Horse Thief Campground would surely have space, I drove thirty miles up Utah Highway 313, only to find that there was no vacancy at any campsite within fifty miles of Moab.

 

With gasoline right at four dollars per gallon, my sixty mile sojourn to Horse Thief and back cost me around forty dollars.  Although high gas prices are supposed to be a deterrent to travelers this summer, it seemed like everyone within driving distance of Moab had decided to give it one last gasp before mothballing their camping equipment.

 

With nowhere else to go, I drove back to Moab, then south on Spanish Valley Drive to the Pueblo Verde development, where I have a deposit down on a residential building lot.  That night, I camped by the curb at Lot #7, where I plan to build my dream home in the next couple of years.

 

With only six of the twenty-eight lots currently occupied, the setting was tranquil and quiet.  Since my coach is self-contained, I had everything I needed to “dry camp” on the street.  The added bonus was to wake up and see the 360-degree view of the Spanish Valley as it will look when my house stands on that site.  To me, there is no better residential view in America, centered as it is between the Moab Rim and the peaks of the Manti La Sal Range. 

 

For those who are interested, there are one-third acre lots still available for less than one hundred thousand dollars.  If you come upon this entry in later years, do not blame me for not telling you sooner.  The window of opportunity might last into 2009, but after that, prepare to buy at the higher rates that baby boomer retirement purchases will inevitably dictate.  As my father used to say, “Get there early and get a good seat”

 

On Sunday, I moved to my reserved site at the Moab Rim Campark, where I spent the next six nights.  Meanwhile, my love flew from Burbank, California to Grand Junction, Colorado, known simply as “Junction” to the locals.  Picking her up at Walker Field Airport in Junction, I noted that their parking and traffic circulation upgrade was still not completed.  To my dismay, it features a main access point that few if any large RVs or buses could negotiate without overriding the curb.  This is what we in America used to call “Progress” with a capital “P”.

 

After driving west on Interstate Highway I-70 back towards Moab, we cut off at State Route 128, which goes through the abandoned cattle and railroad town of Cisco.  Cisco is famous for a nearby uranium ore strike in the early 1950’s.  Today, it is a crumbling wreck of buildings, many built from surplus railroad ties.  It looks too new to be a ghost town, but to old and decrepit to resurrect as a quaint tourist trap.

 

From there, the old two-lane highway wends its way across open prairie, then through ranch land and finally to the Colorado River, near the site where the historic Dewey Bridge was destroyed by fire in April 2008.  It was a classic case of a child playing with matches in a nearby campground.  His “science project” got away from him and rapidly burned the wooden bridge-deck of the old suspension bridge, a now lost treasure on the National Register of Historic Places. 

 

Pyromaniacs of the world take note.  Karma will seek its own resolution, whether here in this life, or at some future time and place, as determined by the confluence of fates.  There is at least one young boy somewhere in this land who will long remember his lack of judgment that windy April evening.

 

After crossing on the new bridge, the subsequent automobile trip down the Colorado River is its own reward.  Entrenched in a deep canyon along this stretch, the river was only a few days past its springtime, 2008 peak flow.  To the delight of the many rafters, there were rapids where usually one found only sandbars.  As the waters slowly receded, rushing water swept the banks clean of candy wrappers and plastic bottles, leaving the river looking much as it did in primeval times.

 

Along the way, we stopped at the Castle Creek Winery at Red Cliffs Lodge for an early and satisfying dinner.  The winery, billed as “Utah’s first and largest commercial winery” produces good, if a bit light wines that are consistent from year to year.  If you stop there, be sure to take a look at their Moab Museum of Film & Western Heritage, featuring “100 years of Cowboy History”.  Because of its undeveloped remoteness, yet easily accessed services in Moab, many classic western movies were filmed here and in nearby Castle Valley.

 

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By James McGillis at 08:37 PM | | Comments (0) | Link