Tag: needles

1950: BEFORE ‘CANYONLANDS’ WAS A PARK…The Other ‘Place No One Knew” by Tug Wilson (ZX#96)

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Alan “Tug” Wilson isn’t exactly a household name to most Zephyr readers. But it should be. While he may not be instantly recognizable, many lovers of Canyonlands and Arches National Parks will recognize his father. Tug was blessed to be the only son of Bates Wilson. In 1949, Bates became the first official superintendent of “The Arches,”  when it was still a national monument. Just a year after his arrival, Bates was introduced to the vast untouched landscape to the west of Moab— and north and south of the little town as well. The canyon Country of southeast Utah was still an almost untouched landscape, known only to the ranchers and cowboys of Scorup/Sommerville Ranch, and a handful of intrepid explorers. The land lay empty for centuries…

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Hitchhiking Across America (December 1972)— A Really Dumb Idea —Jim Stiles (ZX#57)

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Suddenly Schreiber appeared around the corner. He’d run back to the Alto Nido, grabbed every guy he could find, and they all came running back to “save” me. I was impressed! They were ready to rumble. Barry was breathing heavily. He may have been armed with a golf club.

“Hold on!” I said diplomatically. “These men are officers of the law. They mistook me for an armed bandit.” By now the detectives had uncuffed me and though they never actually apologized, they did acknowledge that while I looked like the suspect, there was “reason to believe” I was not that man.

I decided I was not meant to be here. But my VW was just hammered. I didn’t know if it could make the trip home. I calculated that I had driven 22,000 miles in the last six months. It wasn’t really like I missed home anyway…I just didn’t know what else to do. And I was yet again almost broke. It was at that moment that the idea of hitchhiking across the country, more than 2500 miles, with a 75 pound Husky, in the middle of the winter, began percolating in my brain.

“Stiles…are you crazy?” Schreiber said. “It may be warm here, but once you’re out of here, you’re going to freeze your ass off…and besides…HITCHHIKING? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Have you heard of Charlie Manson? That was only three years ago. Do you know how many crazy people are out there? Or just plain mean? Don’t do it.”

I said, “Would you give Muckluk and me a ride as far as San Bernardino?”

Schreiber shook his head. “Sure, I’ll ride you that far. Damn Stiles, you are one crazy son of a bitch.”

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“THE HOME OF TRUTH” —– By Lloyd Pierson (For Marie Ogden’s Followers in the 1930s, the Vortex of the Universe was at Photograph Gap) ZX#24

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Visitors to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park may wonder what the three groups of rag-tag buildings are along the entrance road shortly after leaving the Moab to Monticello Highway. The rapidly deteriorating buildings give little indication of the dreams and high holy aspirations of their former inhabitants. It was on this desolate sagebrush plain that a religious colony (some called it a cult) was founded. Its not so modest name? “The Home of Truth.”

Well, Truth theoretically has to exist somewhere and this forlorn spot in the great Colorado Plateau is probably as good a place as any for the elusive deity to reside.

The colony was founded by Mrs. Marie Ogden in 1933, a well educated widow from New Jersey, after she received a spiritual revelation. Mrs. Ogden’s husband, an insurance executive, had died in 1929 at an early age, back in New Jersey. In her grief she turned to serious religious study and, guided by an inner light, began to seek “the truth” and an understanding of life and death. As she delved further into religion she began to preach and to convince others of the correctness of her beliefs. Her religious activities took her over most of the east preaching and lecturing and at least as far west as Boise, Idaho, where she reportedly had the revelation to establish a religious colony devoted to “the truth”.

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