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