Trot through bandit turf

“Most of what follows is true.'' That's the opening of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the 1969 movie about two bandits born as the sun was setting on the old Wild West.

Morally ambiguous, the movie struck a chord with Vietnam War-era audiences, who stood and cheered when Butch and Sundance met a hail of bullets in a Bolivian town, etching the final frame on to my 15-year-old heart.

The movie wrote something else there as well: a love of Western scenery, which I rediscovered on a recent trip to Utah.

With five national parks, Utah's scenery is unrivalled in North America. It's also where Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, was born in 1866.

On the Parker homestead in the Sevier River valley 200 miles south of Salt Lake City, Butch learnt to be a cowboy and how to brand others' livestock.

Between heists, he and his gang — Wild Bunch — often hid out on Utah's Colorado Plateau.

On the road

I set out to track the outlaw in Utah and went as far as St George when I started running into a third persona: the apocryphal Butch, who is interesting because of the people who told me about him.

St George is the capital of Dixie, so named because Mormon church leaders dispatched pioneers such as Butch's father, Maximillian Parker, to settle and grow cotton around the time of the civil war.

At the Washington County Library, I met Bart Anderson, who has devoted his retirement years to giving slide shows at nearby national and state parks. Of the 111-show repertoire, the one on Butch is the most popular.

Contrary to claims, Butch didn't die in South America on November 6, 1908. He and Sundance rode back to Utah, stopping in Mexico to meet Pancho Villa.

Around 1860, Mormon pioneers settled in Grafton, just down the Virgin River from the red rocks of Zion Canyon National Park.

But floods, disease and hostile Indians made the colony unsustainable.

By 1910, many had moved on, leaving a ghost town to Hollywood location scouts, who found backdrops for a passel of westerns, including The Deadwood Coach (1924), My Friend Flicka (1943) and Rio Grande (1950).

I drove east through the red-and-white slick-rock country along Utah 9, then turned north on US 89 that runs through the hamlet of Orderville.

I turned east on Utah 12 and headed for Ruby's Inn, on the threshold of Bryce Canyon, whittled from limestone into a gallery of pinnacles and spires known as “hoodoos''.

Bryce Canyon Pines motel offers daylong trail rides to the remains of one of the stone cabins where Butch is thought to have stashed fresh horses for the escapes he perfected.

The next day, I drove west to the ranching town of Panguitch.
Butch's youngest sister, Lula Parker Betenson, spent her last years in Panguitch after writing Butch Cassidy, My Brother, published in 1975.

The book confounded Western scholars with its assertion that Butch arrived at the Parker home in Circleville, Ohio, in 1925, driving a new black Ford, unscathed by the bullets of federals who had supposedly killed him and Sundance.

Lula was a toddler when Butch left home but in the 1930s, she believed claims that William T. Phillips of Spokane, Washington, was Butch.

Later, she changed her mind, saying she knew where the real Butch was buried but planned to take the secret to her grave. She died in 1980.

Ranches, barns and pastures line the 20-mile stretch of US 89 north of Panguitch. Just before Circleville, I spotted the lonesome Parker homestead, now privately owned.

I stopped at Butch Cassidy's Hideout motel and restaurant in Circleville for Butch's Special Cheeseburger plate, then visited Alfred Fullmer, 84, who remembered racing horses with some of the Parker boys.

The next morning, I headed east on Utah 12. It makes a 120-mile loop through the minuscule ranching communities of Tropic, Cannonville and Henrieville at the threshold of 1.9-million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, then rounds the east side of the 10,188-foot Powell Point.

Bill Wolverton, a resource management ranger for Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, knows the region well.

Edge of the world

On our way to the Upper Calf Creek Falls, we stopped at Head of the Rocks, overlooking what seemed like the edge of the world.

Wolverton pointed out to me the north face of the Kaiparowits Plateau, the snow-capped Henry Mountains to the northeast and the badlands around Waterpocket Fold, a 100-mile-long buckle of earth with sculptured red-and-white rock marking Capitol Reef National Park.

Utah 12 crosses the Escalante River and it was a short walk from the highway to Upper Calf Creek Falls. Wolverton and I sat looking into the canyon, remembering the movie scene in which Butch and Sundance jump from just such an aerie.

Next, I took Utah 12 over the 10,000-foot Boulder Mountain, unpaved until the 1970s, and spent the night at The Lodge at Red River Ranch on the Fremont River west of Torrey, a stagecoach inn that owners claim Butch visited.

I then went on to Hanksville, about 50 miles east of Capitol Reef, where I met Mike Kelsey, who had promised to take me to Robbers Roost, a 30-mile-wide mesa banked on the south by the Dirty Devil River.

Robbers Roost was the impregnable lair of the Wild Bunch. It had narrow slot canyons for hiding out, some springs, enough fodder for horses and overhangs where the bandit sentries watched for posses. It can be reached only on unmarked dirt roads.

Around mid-morning, we pulled up at Robbers Roost Spring, in a deep-set gulch rimmed by red rock, with water palatable only to animals.

We walked up the canyon to the remains of an old stone cabin built by early ranchers — and used by the Wild Bunch.

Classic lines from the film

Filmgoers who came of age with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid can quote by heart lines from its William Goldman screenplay.

Here are some of the best of the lot:

Cracking the legend around the elusive Butch Cassidy

It is easiest to see the wild, isolated Robbers Roost country where Butch Cassidy often hid out from Angel Point, overlooking the Dirty Devil River.

A dirt loop road leads here from Utah 95 highway about five miles south of Hanksville.

There are occasional signposts and a small parking lot at the trail head.

The hike to the river is about three miles; the views of the deeply incised canyons of Robbers Roost get better all the way.

In low-water conditions, hikers can ford the Dirty Devil River and continue to Angel Cove Spring and, finally, to Biddlecome-Ekker Ranch.

For information, stop in at the Bureau of Land Management office in Hanksville.

Beaver, the county seat on Interstate 15 (I-15) about 100 miles north of St George, is where Robert LeRoy Parker aka Butch Cassidy was born on April 13, 1866, three years before the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in US.

When he was 13, the family moved across the 11,331-foot Circleville Mountain to a ranch in the Sevier River valley.

Today, there's little left of Butch in Beaver besides a much-transformed, unmarked pink stone house where he is thought to have lived and a Best Western hotel named after him.

But while you're there, don't miss the Cache Valley Cheese factory and store, known for cheese curds that squeak when you bite into them.

As they squeak, remember young Bob Parker worked at a dairy for a time before spurring his horse on to the Outlaw Trail.

Parowan, also on I-15, about 30 miles south of Beaver, was the first Mormon colony south of Provo, settled in the early 1850s at the behest of church leader Brigham Young.

Many pioneers are buried in its rock-walled cemetery under the mountains on the west side of town, as is Daniel Parker, Butch's younger brother.

Dan followed Butch on the Outlaw Trail but was arrested during a heist and sent to the Detroit House of Corrections and given a pardon in 1897.

He moved to Parowan, raised a family and is said to have lived a law-abiding life. He died in 1942 and was buried with family members around him.

Bryce Canyon Pines Motel, has guided, daylong horseback rides deep into Red Canyon to visit the remains of a stone hideout said to have been used by Butch.

The $100 (Dh367) fee includes a box lunch. The rides are offered from early spring to late October.

You need some riding experience for the 14-mile trek through rough country.

Silver Reef sprang up around 1875, after silver was discovered in the red sandstone plateaus about 20 miles north of St George.

Soon, there were six mines, producing silver worth about $1-million (Dh3.6 million) a year.

Butch's father worked in the mines when the family hit hard times.

Some have claimed the bandit didn't die in Bolivia, South America, (as suggested by the 1969 movie) but lived out his twilight years in Silver Reef, occasionally visited by the Sundance Kid and the Kid's paramour, Etta Place.

Silver Reef was a ghost town by about 1900 and is now being swallowed up by residential subdivisions.

But the old Wells Fargo building has been restored as the Silver Reef museum and art gallery; next door, there's the Cosmopolitan Restaurant.

The Western Mining and Railroad Museum, Helper, is devoted to the history of a small coal-mining town on the railway line to Salt Lake City.

Just north, there's a mountain pass called Castle Gate, where Butch and bandits pulled off a payroll heist that netted about $7,000 (Dh25,711) in gold.

The story of the bank robbery is told in a display at the museum in Helper that includes the original staircase from the Pleasant Valley Coal Company's paymaster, E.L.

Carpenter's office at Castle Gate, where Butch pointed a gun at him and told him to drop the bags of gold.

Go there ... St George

From the UAE
Salt Lake City is the closest international airport to Butch Cassidy County

From Dubai
Delta flies daily via Atlanta. Fare from Dh5,600

— Information courtesy:
The Holiday Lounge by Dnata. Ph 04-4298576

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