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OttoGeoGraphica

OttoGeoGraphica

@JamesBarne41169

17 May 2025

OttoGeoGraphica May, 2024 Boar’s Tusk and the Killpecker Dunes Sweetwater County, Wyoming I usually do three things when I visit Sweetwater County. I drive up to Riverview Cemetery in Green River to visit the graves of my parents, my oldest brother and my brother-in-law. Then I visit Grub’s Drive-In in Rock Springs for lunch, arguably the best burger in the state, possibly the west. Then I park my car on McCabe Street and recreate my grade school walk-about: down Angle to Edgar, past Lincoln Elementary School to Broadway, under the viaduct to North Front, past the park where I learned how to swing, down the secret alley to Pilot Butte, west to K Street, once home to 1970 prostitutes from Denver, back up to North Front, down to the Park Hotel, under the pedestrian viaduct to Broadway, take F to 2nd to G, around Gobel, up Lee for a block, down H for a block, and then back to my car on McCabe. Those are my rituals. This trip I plan to do those three things, but also revisit the backroads and local sites outside of Rock Springs and Green River. It’s the weekend, however, and Grub’s is closed. The original plan was to camp out at Jamestown, west of Green River at a campground where Ann used to work, near the old Adam’s Trailer Sales. I even made reservations. The forecast calls for almost freezing and forty mile per hour winds, tough on a tent, so I cancel and book a refurbished hotel on Rock Springs eastside. The hotel used to be called El Rancho and affiliated with Rodeway Inns. Like the eastsides of most American towns, the area has been all but abandoned. Two Chinese restaurants, both owned by the Lew family are still open: Sands Café and Lew’s. My favorite was a menu item at Lew’s called Tomato Chow Yuk. The Lew’s are fourth generation Americans and have lived in Sweetwater County since the beginning. The oldest son has remodeled El Rancho. I leave early Saturday morning, Memorial Day weekend, to visit my parents gravesite but the cemetery is closed. I will return later. From Green River’s westside I access Wild Horse Canyon Road which becomes White Mountain Road and drive it’s distance. These are gravel roads. White Mountain is actually a bluff that extends from the river at Jamestown out northwest of Rock Springs at 14-mile-hill. The bluff narrows here, but continues out toward Killpecker Sand Dunes. Above this bluff is a plateau that continues to the Farson/Eden Valley and the Wind River Range. It is along this plateau that the famous wild horses of Sweetwater County run. I see no horses during this morning drive. Standing as a beacon above the plateau is Pilot Butte. Easily visible forty miles from three directions, Pilot Butte is really three sided like a Minuteman militia hat. The road to its base is sandy and pothole covered. Once there was a rusty ladder that allowed one to climb to the top. The ladder is no longer there. White Mountain Road ends at Highway 191, and from there I drive out east to visit the White Mountain Petroglyphs Site, Boars Tusk, and the Killpecker Sand Dunes. The petroglyphs are written on a rock outcropping at White Mountain’s base, and require about a twenty minute trek. Boar’s Tusk is a protruding rock formation that stands alone along the western edge of the dunes. I am reminded of my visit the other day at Chimney Rock in western Nebraska. Both are very similar. Boar’s Tusk is appropriately named: a pig head staring skyward, its smaller protrusion seemingly its tusk. The pothole road circles the formation. When I reach Killpecker Dunes, I avoid the camping area, which I assume will be packed with Memorial Day revelers, and instead opt for the natural area. The sagebrush ends and the sand appears quickly and I almost get stuck. Thankfully I have four-wheel-drive. It’s morning with a cold gusty wind and no cell service. Probably should have went the reveler route. From the dunes I backtrack and reach the Superior Access road. This road will take me about twenty miles east of Rock Springs to the ghost town of Superior, Wyoming. It will also take me by Winton, yet another ghost town. Please don’t think of these two places as Hollywood wild west towns. Both towns, as well as the town of Reliance nearby, boomed during the Sweetwater County coal industry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Winton is merely five to ten concrete foundations or walls of old building graffitied by generations of high schoolers. Reliance and Superior are still lived in, with streets of old houses and old mobile homes. Only their main street has been abandoned with store fronts boarded up or shells of their former selves. During my drinking years there would be keggers south of Purple Sage going toward the Flaming Gorge. A kegger being usually two barrels, a couple liters of Smirnoff vodka, and plenty of orange juice. Once after the bar closed some friends took me out east of Rock Springs to a place called “the catacombs”. I was intoxicated in the middle of the night, but I remember the catacombs being rock formations at ground level, with ruts in them deep enough to walk through, and with some ruts six feet deep. All I know is that they were off North Baxter Road. From Superior I take I-80 west and exit at North Baxter. I drive about ten miles and can’t make a visual of anything that resembles the catacombs. I return to the Interstate, continuing on Middle Baxter Road to State Highway 430, now south of the city. From there I take an old ranch road to the Three Patches Picnic Area. South of Rock Springs is Quaking Asp Mountain. Similar to White Mountain in the north, Quaking Asp is in the south. Not quite the one-sided bluff that White is, I think it may be even higher in elevation. In the crevices along this mountain are patches of quaking asp trees. To reach Three Patches, a dirt road will take me over the mountain to its south face. There among the aspen trees, picnic tables have been there longer than I remember. In the brief summer the family would spend many an afternoon barbequing here. The trees quake and shake at the slightest wind and have one of the sweetest aromas imaginable. Just above the patches, drifts of snow cover the mountainside. It’s late May and I make a snowball or two. It’s nice to be here. I should mention that on the north side of this mountain, one particular aspen patch, when the trees are covered in snow, appears as a lady eating an apple. It is visible from many places around the area. Even today, melting snow cover on the west side of the patch outlines part of her profile but not her apple. From the Three Patches Road I wind my way down to Blairtown Road, Highway 191, then I-80 east to Green River to revisit the family gravesite. It’s a Sunday afternoon and the cemetery is packed with volunteers placing Memorial Day flags. I usually stay for an extended time with Mom, Dad, Clyde, and Craig, but the activity all around me, though warranted and respected, is distracting and disconcerting, effecting any solemnity. I leave for the Rock Springs Holiday Inn. I was a disc jockey at the Holiday Inn from 1978-1980 when its bar way called the Mineshaft and again from 1983-1985 when it was called Fillies. I also learned to bartend there. They have since remodeled the property eliminating everything but the original three-story room building. In its place, Old Chicago Pizza and Taproom stands. My bartender looks younger than this century. I order a Modelo and forwardly ask her if she’s lived here her whole life. She has. I ask her if she knows anything about the catacombs east of town. She hasn’t. Some of the old timers—meaning older than me—sitting at the bar beside either haven’t heard of the place or can’t remember where it is. After another Modelo, another patron sits down. He knows. He confirms that it is off North Baxter Road, but up near the bluffs, just below a radio tower. There is still three hours of daylight. I thank him, finish my beer, and had out east of town. Baxter Road continues due north from I-80, but that radio tower is visible to the northwest. I opt for a dirt road that seems in that direction. Soon, the road is narrow, rutted, washed out, and with, of course, pot holes. The sagebrush and grass growing in the center buff my undercarriage. I places I use the center and right embankment to avoid the ruts and potholes altogether. I look in every direction with still no indication of the catacombs. The wind is strong and at the point where I could go no further, I park my SUV and climb above the rock formations just below the bluff. Now I have a panoramic view of the landscape below, and still nothing. I disappointedly return to town. Now surely I could have stopped at the local chamber of commerce and they would have easily drawn me a map, and surely, the fine people at the historical museum in the old courthouse would know, but it’s the weekend, a three-day weekend, and like Grubs, both are closed. With an hour of sunlight left in my stay here, I drive up to McCabe Street and recreate my grade school walkabout. As a postscript, there is absolutely nothing better than the aroma of sage and sweetgrass after a passing summer rain in Wyoming, where everything glistens as the sun breaks through, and the air is as fresh and clean as an Outkast song.

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