Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2000 River Flowing from the Sunrise: An Environmental History of the Lower San Juan James M. Aton Robert S. McPherson Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Recommended Citation Aton, James M. and McPherson, Robert S., "River Flowing from the Sunrise: An Environmental History of the Lower San Juan" (2000). All USU Press Publications. 128. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/128 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. River Flowing from the Sunrise An Environmental History of the Lower San Juan A. R. Raplee’s camp on the San Juan in 1893 and 1894. (Charles Goodman photo, Manuscripts Division, Marriott Library, University of Utah) River Flowing from the Sunrise An Environmental History of the Lower San Juan James M. Aton Robert S. McPherson Utah State University Press Logan, Utah Copyright © 2000 Utah State University Press all rights reserved Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322-7800 Manfactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 654321 000102030405 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aton, James M., 1949– River flowing from the sunrise : an environmental history of the lower San Juan / James M. Aton, Robert S. McPherson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87421-404-1 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-87421-403-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Nature—Effect of human beings on—San Juan River Valley (Colo.-Utah) 2. Human ecology—San Juan River Valley (Colo.-Utah)—History. 3. San Juan River Valley (Colo.-Utah)—Environmental condi- tions. I McPherson, Robert S., 1947– II. Title. GF504.S35 A76 2000 304.2'09762'59—dc21 00-010229 For Jennifer, My daughter and fellow traveller on the river of life —JMA And to Betsy and the children —RSM Contents Foreword A River in Time xi Donald Worster Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Twelve Millennia on the San Juan 1 Chapter I Prehistory: From Clovis Hunters to Corn Farmers 13 Chapter II Navajos, Paiutes, and Utes: Views of a Sacred Land 29 Chapter III Exploration and Science: Defining Terra Incognita 42 Chapter IV Livestock: Cows, Feed, and Floods 65 Chapter V Agriculture: Ditches, Droughts, and Disasters 84 Chapter VI City Building: Farming the Triad 99 Chapter VII Mining: Black and Yellow Gold in Redrock Country 113 Chapter VIII The Federal Government: Dams, Tamarisk, and 129 Pikeminnows Chapter IX San Juan of the Imagination: Local and 150 National Values Epilogue Visions: Flowing from the Sunrise or a Water Spigot? 167 Notes 172 Bibliography 198 Index 212 Illustrations Map of San Juan River basin xiv, xv De Miera map from the Domínguez-Escalante Expedition 44 Boys show off a Colorado pikeminnow 2 Beaver dam at Butler Wash 47 Honaker Trail section of the San Juan 4 Dr. John S. Newberry 49 Alluvial plains between Four Corners and Chinle Wash 4 Alice Eastwood 52 The Goosenecks 5 The San Juan’s famous sand waves 54 The 1921 Trimble Expedition 6 Byron Cummings and Rainbow Bridge expedition 55 Navajo and Glen Canyon Dams 8, 9 Herbert E. Gregory 56 The Monument Upwarp at Lime Ridge and Chinle Wash 11 Emery L. Goodridge’s inscription near Mexican Hat 57 Lime Ridge 12 Hugh D. Miser of the 1921 Indian ricegrass 14 Trimble Expedition 59 The Moab mastodon 15 Hugh Hyde and Robert Allen of the Clovis camp site on Lime Ridge 16 Trimble Expedition 60 River House Ruin 21 Angus Woodbury 61 Anasazi check dam at Hovenweep 22, 23 Jesse Jennings 62 Beaver Creek Anasazi C. Gregory Crampton and Glen Canyon irrigation ditch 24 Survey team 63 The Kachina Panel at the mouth of Sheep near Mexican Hat 66 Butler Wash 27 Al Scorup, 68 Ute petroglyph along the San Juan River 30 Arthur Spencer and his trading post 69 Southern Ute tepee 31 Remains of the water wheel system at the Comb Wash 32 Hyde-Barton Trading Post 71 Abandoned hogan at the mouth The Aneth Trading Post 72 of Chinle Creek 35 The San Juan Co-op 74 Navajo men at the Bluff Co-op 37 The Navajo Faith Mission 75 Rainbow Bridge 40 Howard Ray Antes, “Mister Sunday” 77 Abandoned Colorado-Utah road near the The Atwood Mining Camp and boats 121 mouth of McElmo Creek 78 Oil gusher at the Goodridge Well 122 Sheep on the Mexican Hat Bridge 79 Miners near the San Juan 123 Navajos with livestock 82 Navajo protestors at the Aneth Oil Field 126 Jim Joe and his family 85 A.C. Honaker clears a path to his Navajo man and corn 86 San Juan trading post 128 L. H. Redd family and H. D. Harshberger Navajo Dam 133 at cornfield 87 The Bluff dam site 134 Flooded cornfield 89 The river near Aneth 138 Wagon next to a bell-shaped hole used The San Juan at the confluence with for storing produce 91 Chinle Wash 140, 141 The Aneth Government Station 93 Norman Nevills and customers 143 Herbert Redshaw 94 River runners on the San Juan 144 Horse-driven irrigation pump at Florence Barnes and a pikeminnow 146 the Honaker camp 97 Oil well at Aneth 147 Bluff landscape 100 Albert R. Lyman 152 The early home of the Wayne H. Redd family in Bluff 101 First photo of the Goosenecks of the San Juan 154 Church, school, dance hall and public meeting building 103 William Jackson photo of the San Juan 155 Floodplain, 105 Norman Nevills 156 The old Swing Tree 108 Wallace Stegner 158 Riprap barrier in Bluff 110 Tony Hillerman visits Walter E. Mendenhall’s camp 161 Placer miners in San Juan Canyon 114 E.L. Goodridge’s first oil well 162 Gold mining at “Dempsey’s claim” 115 A.R. Raplee’s camp 163 Sluice box and waterwheel at the foot of Mexican Hat Rock 117 Ellen Meloy 164 Two sections of the Honaker Trail 119 Glen Canyon Dam 168 Flat-bottomed boats 120 Foreword A River in Time Donald Worster t. John the Divine ended his Book of forth, with a new clarity and integrity that it has S Revelation with “a pure river of water of life, not had before. They have done this by putting clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of the river at the center of the story and then God and of the Lamb.” On either side of that watching the civilizations come and go. The San river grew the tree of life, bearing all manner of Juan becomes the main character; it is no fruits every month of the year and shiny green longer merely incidental to human endeavors. leaves that could heal all the nations. He would We call this radical new perspective envi- not have liked the San Juan, the river of the ronmental history. It begins with the premise that American Southwest named by Spanish mission- the natural and human worlds are not totally aries in his honor. Only cottonwood and separate but intertwined and interdependent. tamarisk trees grow along its banks. Its water is What nature does affects human beings in the dark with silt and has been polluted by oil. It most profound way; vice versa, what people do flows not from a heavenly throne but from the can influence the patterns and processes of state of Colorado, where gold miners have nature profoundly, especially in the modern sought wealth more than spirituality. Native period, when technology gives us so much more Americans, to be sure, have deeply religious power than we have ever had before. Often that feelings about this river. So do Mormon settlers impact has been felt not only by other species in river towns like Bluff. But they have not lived who share the place but also, through the intri- together in peace; on the contrary, this river has cacies of ecological feedback, by human com- experienced bitter conflict, fierce competition munities as well. Because early Clovis hunters, for its scarce resources, and not a few deaths. In the first people to leave their mark on the place, other words, it has been a real river, not some may have exterminated the local population of phantasm in a dream, and how much more Columbian mammoths, both hunters and hunt- interesting that fact makes it. ed suffered. Later, when the Navajos acquired James Aton and Robert McPherson have sheep from the Spanish, they overgrazed the given us a splendid history of this harshly beau- scanty vegetation and created an environmental tiful place. Heretofore it has been neglected by disaster. The whites who crowded in with their historians and other scholars, though they have large cattle herds during the late nineteenth written a surprising number of books and arti- century have followed an age-old pattern of cles on the various peoples, the colorful individ- land exploitation that likewise has brought seri- uals, who have passed along the river. Aton and ous economic and social problems. If this phe- McPherson have drawn on that literature exten- nomenon of interdependence has been hard sively, while adding prodigious archival research for people to learn, it has seldom entered the of their own. But they have done more than sit apprehension of historians—until the rise of in a library turning over brittle pages from the environmental history, so well exemplified in past. They have experienced this river firsthand. this book. And they have completely reconceptualized the Most dramatically, the river has been a place and its history so that the whole stands powerful force over time.