11. Off Road

 With some trepidation I left the blacktop again on the path the riders followed which ran up to sixty miles north of highway 50, crossed highway 93 and continued on the dirt nearly all the way to Salt Lake. I had obtained very detailed maps in Fallon, but mechanical failure would be hard to fix.

 

The next two days were a steady slog along sometimes rocky ,sometimes sandy paths in a landscape described in the guide as “a place only a rattlesnake could love” and “a good area for bombing practice”, but it also had great beauty in the contours of the land and at sunset when the slanting light softened the colours.

A rider named Billy Fisher had ridden on this part of the trail.  He had been born in Woolwich, London near where I grew up and was already 15 when his parents emigrated to the USA.  Age 21 he was hired by the Pony and in June of 1860 wrote to his sweetheart Miss M. Van Etten:

“The Indians are raising the devil out here now, but I think they will soon stop, as the troops have come to our assistance”. 

The Indian disturbance to which he referred was the Pah Ute War.  I wonder what he thought of the bright, parched and empty West after gray, damp, crowded Woolwich.  He must have liked it for he married Miss Van Etten settled in Utah and became a citizen of some importance.  Many of the other riders on this section were Mormon boys who had grown up in conditions of extreme hardship and were well suited to the work.

Approaching Cherry Summit the slopes got steeper and rockier and the little Honda was taking a beating.  On a stretch noted as “a seasonal stream bed” I decided to set up camp.  The guide said “nothing gets over Cherry Summit after the rain” but that seemed a most unlikely event.  I was dreaming I was in a downpour in England with a friend and we were putting plastic bags on our heads when I awoke to the sound of raindrops.  It lasted a short while then stopped but then came down in earnest.  The soil here turns slick after rain and is impossible to move over.  I imagined being stranded for days.  I had seen on a sign in the valley below that there was ranch 26 miles north- “I can walk that far” I thought so I won’t starve.  I wrapped up to conserve calories and went back to sleep.  When I awoke the wind was blowing strongly and soon dried out the surface.  I was able to proceed cautiously over the summit.

The settlement marked as Shelbourne on highway 93 was one gas pump, a café and four small motel rooms.  The operator said it had been closed for along time and he had only just taken it over.  I pushed on over another rugged range of hills and then up the beautiful Antelope Valley, part of which is now the Goshute Indian Reservation.

  

In the hills

At Ipabah, just slightly bigger than Shelbourne, at an historical marker, I met Tom Green who had been a history student at Salt Lake University and spent a long time telling me of the happenings in the area at the time of the “Pony”.  He also told me he was a polygamist and was being charged with bigamy among other things.  His family of five wives and 25 children, who have been timed to arrive in groups of five he called “teams” ,live in a remote area of Utah in a group of trailer homes.  He said there would probably be a plea bargain in his case but he was going to demand some prison time so he could tell his grandchildren he went to jail for his beliefs.  There was a good looking young woman and several well dressed children in his van who patiently waited while we talked. Later, when I arrived in Salt Lake, there was Tom on the front page of the Tribune under the title “Family of Felony?”.  At the age of 54 he does indeed have five wives including two pairs of sisters aged between 30 and 23 years of age!

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