A Visit to the Historical Cowboy Canyonlands

A man stands in a cave used by ranchers to "lay out" with their cattle while away from home. Photograph of a Moab Museum exhibition photograph. Courtesy of Deena Bouknight

While little has changed in the vast wilderness canyonlands of Utah, except for rocks that have tumbled off towering buttes and plateaus, raising cattle in the area has evolved over the last 100-plus years. The area around Moab, Utah, as well as inside Arches and Canyonland National Parks, were once replete with cattle ranches large and small. In fact, remnants of those ranches remain in signage—Horse Thief Ranch Trailhead—and in structures, such as the Wolf Ranch log cabin, fencing, and root cellar preserved on the Delicate Arch trail at Arches.

During the winter months, cows still free-range thousands of acres between Arches and Canyonland (roughly 30 miles), and signs alert drivers that they must use caution, as cows and calves prefer the grasses growing roadside. In spring through summer, cattle are rounded up and loaded into large stock trailers and released into the nearby high elevations of the La Sal Mountains.

Red rocks adorn the landscape where cattle graze and cowboys guide them. Courtesy of Deena Bouknight

However, when 19th-century cattle ranching began in the canyonland wilds, cowboys—and cowgirls—had to navigate and use the landscape to water and feed their cattle, themselves, and their horses. The area’s unique geography of rock shelf outcroppings and shallow caves carved out by erosion and water provided temporary homes and storage spots for hay and provisions.

Dead Horse Point State Park is situated at the midpoint between the Arches and Canyonland National Parks. The Moab Museum’s exhibition there informs tourists about the ranching history of the area.

Cowboys and cowgirls stored their gear and warmed themselves around fires in caves like this one. Courtesy of Deena Bouknight

The Good Ole Days of Ranching

Ranching is more complex than most people expect. The exhibits discuss that cowboys who herded cows to grazing areas and returned to their ranches lost many cows to predators and various landscape hazards, while cowboys who camped close to their herds lost fewer cattle.

Cowboys and cowgirls who camped near their herds in the canyons and among the rocks were able to assist lost, injured, and stranded cattle. It was easier to keep predators away with dogs and other means. They set up makeshift corrals for horses using spent juniper, pinion pine branches, or tree trunks that littered the grazing lands around the base of canyon walls. The cowboys and ranchers referred to the practice of staying with the herds as “laying out.”

A cave used by ranchers to "lay out" with their cattle while away from home. Photograph of a Moab Museum exhibition photograph. Courtesy of Deena Bouknight

An excerpt from Utah history writer Tom McCourt’s book “Last of the Robbers Roost Outlaws: Moab’s Bill Tibbets” is reproduced at the Dead Horse Point State Park exhibit. It reads: “Being able to stay with the herd gave them the advantage in the cow business. The losses to the elements, quicksand, rustlers, and predators were less than most of their (cabin-dwelling) neighbors.”

It's easier to keep track of threats to your cattle if rescue is just a saddle away. Courtesy of Deena Bouknight

Another long-term plus to “laying out” was that husbands, wives, and older children did not have to be separated for long periods. Wives and older children, especially boys, went along to help with the herd, and they learned to make the most of cooking in cast iron, Dutch-oven style over an open flame. Food mostly consisted of mule deer, beans, dried fruit, and sourdough bread.

Wiladeane Chaffin Hills (1928–2013), raised in the canyonlands at her family’s longtime cattle ranch, described her upbringing in “Tales of Canyonland Cowboys” by Richard Negri as “under the ledge,” meaning camping in some sort of rock outcropping. Gertrude Goudelock (1880–1933) is described as “partner to her husband David Lafayette Goudelock (1866–1952) as much on the range as in marriage. … [S]he saddled up alongside David to move livestock, cut cows, [and] brand hides.”

The tenacious and hardworking American spirit exhibited in the canyonlands was often passed down through generations of families who inherited cattle operations. They learned early how to watch cattle closely by day, camp in the canyon rocks by night, and get fattened cattle to market before returning to their ranches.

A cow and a calf in the arid southeastern Utah plains. Courtesy of Deena Bouknight

Today, cattle ranchers and cattle hands round up their free-range cattle in trucks and ATVs instead of on horseback. But evidence of the canyonlands camp spots still exists near hiking trails and roads throughout Utah’s national parks and Bureau of Land Management areas. Cattle campers laying out often carved their names and messages in the rocks as a reminder to future generations that they were there.

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