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POKING THROUGH THE RUINS #17— Abbey’s Old Trailer? And the Wooden Caboose in the Yellow Cat

For years the official ‘visitor center’ at the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park was this tiny trailer at Hans Flat, about 40 miles down a dirt road from Utah State Highway 24.  There were always rumors in the late 70s that this was, in fact, THE trailer that Ed Abbey inhabited at Arches NP in the 1950s. In fact, Abbey’s trailer sat in the Canyonlands ‘bone yard,’ (its junk area) for years and was finally sold for scrap to Mesa County, Colorado. They wanted the axles.

This old wooden caboose sat all by itself on an empty stretch of desert north of Arches, in the old Yellowcat mining district. You could still read the old “D&RGW” logo (Denver and Rio Grande Western) on its flank. How it got there or how it suddenly disappeared remain a mystery…JS

 

The Feb/Mar Z: click the cover:

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2 Responses

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  1. Steve Wright said

    My mom and dad lived in that caboose at yellow at when dad mined uranium and vanadium. Mom knows how it got there.
    Dad died in 1984.

  2. Jack klapwyk said

    I have a couple of photos of the caboose taken in the early seventies, but I don’t know how to post them.

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