Oral History Program Dora Veater Interviewed by Bonnie Barney 23 January 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dora Veater Interviewed by Bonnie Barney 23 January 1971 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Veater, Dora, an oral history by Bonnie Barney, 23 January 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dora Veater. The interview was conducted on January 23, 1971, by Bonnie Barney. Mrs. Veater discusses her life in southern Utah as well as some general discussion on the description and terrain of the area. BB: This is Bonnie Barney from Weber State College, Utah History Class with Dr. Sadler. Today we are going to interview Mrs. Dora Veater. Mrs. Veater has a lot to do with the story of the Escalante area in Southern Utah. Her and her husband were, how should I say, pioneers down there, and we would like to get a little bit of this history from Mrs. Veater. So tell us a little bit about your discovery down there or how you got down to the Escalante area and just a little bit about it. DV: Well, my husband bought a ranch called the Soda Spring Ranch back in 1942 and moved into the Escalante area and this was a desolate deserty country and I don't know how many people will know about the Mormons who went down through what they call the Hole-in- the-Rock to get to the 4-corner area. Our range and ranch covered this area where the Hole-in-the-Rock was, and it was one of the biggest spreads down on that end of the desert and Lake Powell. The shores of Lake Powell is now close to this range. BB: This ranch then was the Soda Ranch, right? DV: Right. BB: And about how big was it, you say it was the biggest one that was down there? DV: Well, one of the biggest. 1 BB: One of the biggest? DV: One of the biggest that was there and when we went there we went with two other people that bought in on the ranch. Then later Clark, who was my husband, bought the other two out and we owned the ranch. We went up on what our range run from the desert of the Soda Range and went up as high as when you climb about 3500 to 5000 feet upon what they call 50-mile mountain range. The cattle run on this range on the mountain in the summer and then by bringing them down the trail off the mountain onto the desert and this is where the cattle run on the desert. Now on this range there was a lot of very interesting scenery, things that were new at that time. Since then the National Geographic Society has gone in there and taken pictures and named a lot of these places that were unknown at that time. There's one place especially that was called the Cathedral, and the only way that you could get into this place, or the only way you could get down across this area at all, was horseback. You took your pack horses and went with pack horses, you didn't have any cars or roads or anything of that kind down into this area at that time. This Cathedral, that I started to tell ya about, is a big, great big cave like thing, that runs back in the sandstone and its, oh, I would say, approximately 100 yards from the opening where you go into it back to the lake, thats in the back of it. BB: Now this is where Lake Powell is, right? DV: This borders Lake Powell. BB: Oh, I see, uh huh. DV: And when you, the acoustics are so great in there that you can stand at the opening of this cave and talk normally to people over by the lake, which would be a hundred yards 2 away, and they can hear you just as well as if you were standing face to face. There's a water fall that goes into this place, goes down over the ledges and it falls, oh, I'd say, 50 feet down over this ledge. But it goes over so smoothly and into this lake that it don't make a ripple at all. If you want ripples on the lake so you can take pictures of it, you know, so that you know it’s a lake, you have to throw rocks or something in there to make a ripple on the lake. BB: Now is this still there, this Cathedral. DV: Yes, it’s still there. BB: It’s still there. DV: Uh huh, and the vegetation in there is very tropical, different from the vegetation up on top because it had vines and moss and all these tropical growth things in there that you don't find on top the desert, BB: I've never heard of this, is this a landmark? Do they have any markings up on it? DV: Well, at that time they didn't, but like I tell you, later the Geographical Society went in there and named a lot of these places, ya see that didn't have any name at that time. In fact, it was very inaccessible and few people went there because it was so hard to get in to it, and it’s, oh, maybe a couple of miles up a canyon off what was called the Escalante River, and you had to go horse back. You couldn't get down there in a car or even a four-wheel drive. There was just no way to get there only on your horses. There's another interesting thing about that country down there, you go up on this mountain on what we call the 50-mile Mountains. It has a name the Geographical Society give it, I can't say it, but everyone around that area calls it the 50-Mile Mountain. 3 There's a reason for this there's only two places in fifty miles where you can either go up on or come down off this fifty-mile mountain. That is, at that time, that's all there was and my husband decided to build a kind of a line shack place to stay and live down there. This was done by tearing down a log house and marking the logs and hauling them down there to what is now known as the Soda Ranch. A lot of times you'd have to go around and back up and go around to make a turn through these canyons. It was very bad. There had never been a vehicle of any kind down there at that time. He was determined that he'd have this shack down there' so he just moved it. BB: Now is this where you lived? DV: Yes, and this is where our camp headquarters was at that time. He took the logs and put them back up, you know, as he took them down and numbered them, put them back up. The water, good drinking water, was very scarce and so this is the thing that we tried to develop there, to have water. This cave where the water was, you could walk into that cave and it was just like walking into a refrigerated room, it was that much cooler than the desert. BB: This was down right near the Colorado or was this near Lake Powell? DV: Well, the Soda headquarters is really about eight miles away from the Colorado. BB: I wish I was more familiar with that area because I've never been down close to the river. DV: They have roads down there now. You can go right out to the Hole-in-the-Rock and you can go right out to the jump off where you go down into the Cathedral. BB: Have you been down there recently to see what it’s like? 4 DV: Not since they've built roads and things down there I haven't been there. But one time it was kind of funny. He put a new roof on this cabin, you know, and shingled it with new shingles and one day we were surprised by having a couple of fellas come to the headquarters. This was very unusual because people just didn't go that far away, you know, down off in there. Few people knew about it in the first place and fewer people knew that there was a place to stay once they got there, you see. When they got there they began to question us about this cabin so far away from everything and everybody and out there by itself and everything. They thought that some deserter from the Army had gone down there and built up a camp. This was the Army that discovered it from the air and come to investigate it. BB: I'll be darned, and these two men were from the Army? DV: Uh huh, and they were investigating this cabin that far away from everything else. Then after we finally was down there for a while we got better roads built into there so people could come at least as far as the Soda Ranch in 4-wheel drive vehicles. But, like I said, water was the big premium thing. Rainfall was their dependency, you know, for water. They had what they called water pockets there, but you… BB: I'm sorry, I was wondering if this is close to the Cathedral where your headquarters was? DV: Well, no its out across the desert over to what is called the Escalante River and you go down the Escalante River to meet this, to go up into this cave that they call the Cathedral. Then there's a canyon called the Coyote Canyon and this has a number of natural bridges and things but a lot of it will be covered up by Lake Powell, 5 BB: I see, I imagine a lot of this area that you pioneered- discovered is covered up by Lake Powell now, DV: No, a lot of it will be. We didn't discover this outfit down there, we bought it off of a bunch of people that were already there. But it was so remote that few people ever went there, you know. Another interesting thing about it was to go up on this 50-mile Mountain and we used to camp at what we called Mokee Seep and this was where the water came out of the sandstone. At night, if it happened to be a moonlight night, or maybe if you just had a rainstorm that had covered the area, you know, and on a moonlight night, you'd look out across the desert and it looked like a huge city. The moon shining in these pools of water all out through that country, you know, and you'd swear that there was a huge city down there the way the light shown on those things. It was a beautiful sight. BB: It sounds like it is. DV: Now we took a trip with a scout from Hollywood that went down in there and took a lot of pictures and made a talky of that country down there and we were gone for 15 days. BB: Did you get to see it after it was completed? DV: Oh yes, and a lot of that country that we saw at that time will never be seen by the traveling public now because it will be covered by this water. To me it’s too bad, you know, because it would have been a wonderful land you know, a beautiful scenic thing if they could have got roads and a way to get in there that was easier than to go by horseback. BB: It sure sounds pretty, 6 DV: And we of course run cattle up on the mountain, we run cattle on the desert BB: What do you mean by running cattle? I'm so naive about this. DV: Well, this means, Bonnie, that you have all this range where your cattle feeds, you know, and you run your cattle on this. That’s just a term of taking care of your cattle and a place for them to feed. This is a wonderful, wonderful country down there. I think the day will come when there'll be resorts and boats, where people can take their boats off and everything from that side of the river. You see, all across from the other side of the river it’s about from the Hole-in-the-Rock down to Lake Powell to the bridge and that is about 80 miles down through the river. BB: So, what bridge is that? DV: Well, that’s the bridge down to Page, you know. That bridge that crosses, it isn't the last bridge they've built that is holding up the water for Lake Powell. BB: That I have seen. DV: In time this water will back up and cover up a lot of this country that we went over at that time. One place on this trip we took we traveled about 6-7 miles and if we could have gone as the crow flies as they say, why it was about a quarter of a mile through. But we had to go clear out around this mesa on the river, you know, follow clear out around this mesa to get a quarter of a mile. BB: Well, it sure sounds interesting. Do you miss it? DV: Oh yes, I did but you go back know and it’s not like it was when we were there, civilization has moved in, may I say that? BB: Sure. 7 DV: Well, this is the thing, it’s not like it was when we were there. There's all these roads and things now and people are beginning to be conscious of that country and then too, it’s been made into a park and these people, like your Geographic people and your government and your resort people and all this, will change it. It will be altogether different than what it was when we were there. BB: How did you come down to Escalante? DV: Well, Clark always wanted an outfit like that, you know, what they call a cow outfit. Now this means that you have so many cows that you run and then you take your calves off and this is where you get your income. In the fall you gather these calves and sell the calves, you see. When you buy an outfit like that they'll tell you "Well, it’s so many cows," you know "So many cow outfit", and this is why we moved down there. BB: Oh, I see, and that was from Salt Lake, right? You lived in Salt Lake? DV: No. BB: I thought that article, we have an article here also that was written about Mr. and Mrs. Veater that was in the paper. Let’s see this was in 1950, the Deseret News Magazine. We'll quote from that magazine at the end of this interview. I thought in here it said that you moved down from Salt Lake. DV: Well, that was a misprint, you see. The lady who wrote this article lived in Salt Lake and she used to come down and stay at the Soda with us and we'd take her out on side trips and things like this. She was very much took up with this country. BB: It sounds beautiful, you miss that stuff living in the city. 8 DV: It is, it’s really a gorgeous place to be and I think about it now and how easy and how accessible all this stuff is and people don't realize how rugged it was clear back in 1940. BB: I'll bet it’s changed a lot in 30 short years. DV: You bet, it just makes a whale of a lot of difference, you see. This is the way the big outfits are made, you know. In the West most big outfits are made by some man who has this dream of a cattle empire. They go and they get some out-of-the-way place like this and they buy more land as they go, you know, more range rights and more land. BB: Well, who did you guys sell out to? DV: We sold out to Gale Bailey. BB: Now, does he still have any of this down there, do you know? DV: No, he's sold it but I don't know, I think the Griffin brothers have it now. BB: I was kind of wondering if somebody really capitalized on that down there or not. DV: Well, I don't think they have yet because the water hasn't backed up there far enough yet for them to depend on that end of it. BB: Oh, I see. Was this maybe one of the reasons that you sold out or did you get tired of it? DV: No, there wasn't any schools in that area at that time. Kids, once they got out of grade school, had to go somewhere else to go to high school. BB: You did have a grade school down there then? DV: Yes, kids went to grade school and we wanted to be where our kids could go to school and so we sold that out and bought this place in Salina, Utah, where we lived for a number of years after that. 9 BB: Well, in your— I don't know how to say it— escapades in the Escalante, in this area down there, do you feel like you're a part of Utah history in being down there? It sounds like you were one of the first people down there really. DV: Well, no, we weren't one of the first people down there but it was a very remote area down there where we were. Now, around the Escalante, Escalant-a is really the proper word to say. BB: Escalant-a? DV: Uh huh, in the town of Escalante, about thirty miles from Escalante there was a little town called Boulder and those people in Boulder didn't pay taxes until 1936 because nobody would go in there to assess their property. It was that hard to get in and out of there. So you see it was really a wilderness back in those times. BB: Even though there was people it sounds like they were spread out quite a bit. DV: Uh huh, the CC boys built the first road that you could go over with anything but a horse into that Boulder country. When they had the CC camps. BB: Was that when you were starting? DV: That was in the AO's when we were over there, in the 30's I should say, instead of the AO's, and they built these roads when the CC boys were in there just before we moved over there. We moved over there when World War II was on and it was just a tore up time all over, you know. But they had got a road so you could drive a car from Escalante to Boulder, the CC boys built it. BB: Well, now the only area that I know around that country is this Hogs Back or something like that. 10 DV: That's between Escalante and Boulder. BB: Now is this some of the country that you were around and this is part of it? DV: Oh yes, we traveled over it. We had friends in Boulder and we went to see them and they came to see us in Escalante. BB: That's even a wilderness now almost. DV: Well, it’s not like it used to be in the 1940's, not at all, and you see they've got good roads now so that you can make a circle clear around. You can go from Bryce Canyon down through Escalante and over through to Boulder and out through Teasdale and go right up into Green River and up in that way. Now when you get to Boulder you don’t have to turn around and come back to Escalante to get out like you used to do. The Mormons really were first to go down there and do any studying or try to find out anything about this country and that's when they took those wagons all down through the Hole-in-the- Rock to cross over and go into what is called the four corners country and settle that country over there. BB: So this was? DV: This famous 40-mile dance hall that you hear about in Mormon history was on our range, and so was the Hole-in-the-Rock. BB: I don't think I've ever heard of 40-mile dance hall? DV: Well, this is where they had all their gatherings, their dances. What it is, is just a big sandstone rock kind of right out in the middle of the desert and it has a kind of a whipped out place in it, you know, that had quite a level floor on it and then just up 11 above that there was a little one and the orchestra used to set up in this little place and play. BB: Now nature made this or is this man-made? DV: Oh no, nature, it was a natural thing from nature. BB: Is it still down there do you know? DV: Oh yes. BB: Hmm, I've never heard of it, never have. That sounds interesting. DV: They used to hold dances, the Mormons and people that was there at that time, and this is why it’s called 40-mile dance hall because this is where everybody gathered within miles to go there and dance. BB: Well, I'll be darned and this was right on your property? Did you do anything with it? DV: Oh, we'd go have a party or something there, why this was fine. BB: That’s what I was wondering, if you ever used it at all. DV: But one of the biggest things was what they called the Sooner. BB: Yes, I read about that in this article, now what exactly was that? DV: Well, it’s where the road went. There were no tracks, no anything, it just went down over these sandstone ledges. There was no road or anything you just clung to the side of the hill on these sandstone rocks. There was one fellow that when he come to go down that, while the Mormons were crossing, and when he looked at it he said "Well, I'd sooner be home than here" and this is why it got called the Sooner. 12 BB: That’s interesting. Well, can you think of any more experiences that happened to you that might be interesting for our class to hear? DV: Well, it’s kind of hard to make people now days understand how it was at that time, you know, because it’s so different from the way they live now, I will say this, I do think people were a lot happier. There was none of this bustle and rush and hurry and all this. You had so much work to do and you went ahead and did it with what equipment you had which people would laugh at now, I guess. But we thought it was alright back in those days 'cause it got the job done. BB: How many people were on your ranch? Many? DV: Just our family, oh, we would have cowboys on the roundup you know. We would have different cowboys come but it was quite a ride to gather up those cattle. It was very rough, rugged country to ride and gather in. Sometimes it took two or three weeks to gather the cattle. Right to the side of the cabin there was a big cave back in the sandrock and by putting two panels of fence across it you could put about 3,000 or 4,000 head of cattle in there and hold them. BB: This was on the range? DV: Uh huh, this is how big some of those places are down there in the sandrock. You won't see this from the floor of the desert, you don't see these things, you have to be about down where they are, BB: Well, that really sounds interesting. I imagine a lot of people that have gone down there are going to wish they could have investigated further to see these things. 13 DV: Well, I can't remember just what year it was in the Geographical magazine, but there was a wonderful write-up about that country down there. Pictures and guides with jeeps down there that were trying to make a trail out, you know. This was way back then too, and this is when they first began to think that maybe they could build trails and roads out to these places so that people with vehicles could go out there. I think the Sons of the Pioneers kind of went into it too a little bit, and the boy scouts used to go down there too, to tours and things like this. It was down in this area where that truck load of boy scouts tipped over and so many of them were hurt and some of them killed. BB: Was this just a few years ago? DV: Yes, that hasn't been too long ago. BB: Yes, I remember vaguely something about it. DV: I think most people will remember reading about that in the paper, but this is the kind of roads there was at that time you see. No electricity and things like that of a necessity. You had to have hand tools and things like this that you just didn't have any place else, you know. You had to make do with what you had is what I mean. BB: Well, that sure does sound interesting. I wish we could keep going on, I'm not sure of specific things to ask because like I say I'm not familiar with the area down there. DV: It’s a wonderful country and I think the time will come when it will be like Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon. People will really go in there to see this because eventually they'll be able to go up the Escalante River in boats and then take those little short trips, side trips, where they'll be able to see a lot of this stuff. BB: Can you go on the Escalante River now? 14 DV: Not now, but the time will come when it fills up enough that they'll be able to take boats up there. You can take small craft up but not big boats like they have on the lake. BB: Now, where does the Escalante River run? Does that run right through the city? DV: It heads up by Escalante and goes clear down through that desert, 65 miles into the Colorado River. BB: I don't remember the Escalante River and this is why I was wondering. DV: Well, you crossed it that day we went to Boulder. BB: Was that what that was? DV: You know where that big cement bridge was across it, you know? BB: At Calf's Creek, around there? DV: Uh huh, and then we went across the Escalante river and on across and off up into Calf Creek, which is on the way to Boulder. BB: Well I'll be, I guess I did know where something was. Well, Dora, I sure appreciated talking to you. DV: Well, I hope it will help you a little bit. BB: I think it will, that country down there fascinates me I don't know about anybody else. DV: I'm glad I knew the country and seen it before all this new stuff moved in because I seen it just like it was. BB: I kind of wish there was some of that country left where you could really get into it, DV: Oh there is a lot. 15 BB: Still down there? DV: Oh yes, before they'll get to it all, 'cause it’s a mighty big country. BB: I'll bet it is, I don't think people realize. DV: There's one big window down there in the sandstone ledges and they call it a window and you can fly a 4-motor bomber through it, it’s that big. BB: Oh my word! And that’s still down in that area? DV: It’s still there. They'll never cover that. BB: I guess they don't realize how vast it is really, because I just can't imagine. DV: You can't anymore know the depth of those canyons and how those ledges are. I'll tell you another thing you get up and watch it at sunrise, go back and see it at noon, and go back and see it at night, and its three different places altogether. The sun has this effect on it. BB: Sounds beautiful, it really does. Well, Dora, it sounds like the scenery was beautiful down there and as long as we've talked it sounds like those were your fondest memories. DV: Yes, I think so. Some of them of course you always have memories of people and things that happened on places like this. BB: What about the people down there. I'm always concerned about the Indians. Did you have trouble? DV: Oh, not really trouble. There wasn't too many. The Navajo Indian reservation, the Navajo Mountain sets across the river from this range, you see, and the Navajo Indians 16 reservation is by these mountains. Well, just to give you one instance, my husband came along and he caught some of the Indians killing one of his cattle for beef, you know. So he told them they would have to pay him for the beef, and they, of course, had no money. Indians, if they have it, they're not going to admit it. Anyway they told him they'd bring him a load of blankets, which they did. They were honest enough about it. They loaded up the horses and brought the blankets to him to pay for the beef. But they decided they had to stay in our house, sleep in the house, 'cause they were a guest of my husband's, see. So we put them down in the basement to sleep and I wasn't very happy about that I want to tell ya. But we sat them up to the table to feed them, and the man who was the head of the expedition took everything first to his place and he would eat all he wanted and if there was anything left then the others could have it. BB: Off his own plate? DV: No, there were no plates about it, he just took the bowl and set it over there, you know, off the table like your dishes that you dish things up in. He'd just take that and set it over to his place and eat all he wanted out of it and if there was anything left then he would hand it back to the others and they could have what was left. It was very hard for them though because they didn't come up through that country very much because they had to cross this Colorado River. Swim their horses across or cattle or anything that they had. It was kinda hard to get from the river bank up over these big high ledges onto the desert. There was only a few places that they could do this. It was hard for them to come out that way, it was much easier for them to go the other way. BB: It sounds like it, so you really didn't have any trouble? 17 DV: Oh no, you know what I mean, nothing like that. Most part we got along with them very well. BB: That's good, did they seem resentful? This always interests me 'cause you hear so much about Indians feeling resentful, DV: No, they realize that they were fairly caught with the beef and Clark told them that he wasn't going to persecute them or anything like that but they would have to pay for it and this was the way that they paid for it was to bring these things up here. The reason I brought this up was the interesting fact that, they felt like they were his guests when they got there. The thing we had to do was put them to bed in our basement to make the deal go through smoothly. BB: And they were paying him back for stealing, actually. What was this like, the Chief, or was it just somebody that was in on the stealing? DV: The Chief wasn't with them. It was just somebody he'd sent to pay this and to make it right so there wouldn't be anything against the tribe. BB: I imagine the reservation was set up at this time, is that true? The Navajo. DV: Oh yes, the Navajo reservation down there you see a part of it is in Utah and part of it is in Arizona, but it’s a huge reservation. There is a lot of Indians down there and they run a lot of sheep and such as this. BB: In their reservation? DV: On their side of the river, uh huh. BB: Well, it sounds interesting. You hear so many Indian stories that you kind of wonder about it. 18 DV: You've probably heard of these, what they call Mokee houses built in the cliffs and things, BB: Yes, these are the ones that use the little ladders to go up, and then pull their ladders in. DV: This is right, and a lot of those caves and things that you find down there have still got the hieroglyphics or Indian writings and paintings and things are still there and they are very plain in these caves, BB: I imagine all these Indians were gone when you got down there? DV: On our side of the river, yes. But you take the people like your naturalists and your geographic people and people like this that knows these things and studies them can tell you what all this is about, these writings and all this sort of thing. It’s very interesting and there is quite a lot of that down there. Of course like I say, a lot of it is going to be covered up now with this lake. BB: I can't help but think about this. It just seems so sad that this is covering up so much. DV: Well, it’s a thing that has to be done for the betterment of more people, you see. Now a few people maybe would get to go to the scenery and make a trip through there, that would be wonderful. But, the dam and the water and all this is a necessity to thousands of people. So, a person can't resent this progress in the country, you know. BB: When you look at it that way it’s inevitable. DV: When they first said they were going to build this dam and it was going to cover up a lot of this country I kinda resented it and felt real bad because, oh, even when we lived down there, and since we have lived there it’s always been our dream that someday there would be a highway or some way that people could go down there and see the 19 things that we've seen. I've seen places down along that river, and been in places down along that river that I don't think any other women’s ever been. It’s that kind of a thing, and because I rode the range, would go with Clark riding with the cattle and rode the range just like another cowboy, go out and take your pack and stay two or three days at a time. Why, you got to see a lot of that kind of thing that you don't just if you were out on a sightseeing trip. You wouldn't go to these places because it would be too hard. But you just take the two of us out searching for cattle. Now, this 50-mile mountain deal, for one thing, there was only one trail that he could put his cattle off this mountain at that time. That's all there was so you couldn't ride a horse down this trail, it was that steep. You had to get off and walk and lead your horse down. BB: And you run your cattle over this? DV: But the cattle would come down over this mountain, you see, and this is the only way you had to put them back up there. But that’s the way people had to do things in those days. You didn't have big cats and all this stuff to go in and make a trail somewhere because you wanted to get there. You just got there the way nature lets you. Up over ledges and rocks and all this sort of thing and it was quite a climb. One time we made a trip up there and had some friends of ours, Hollywood people, with us and one of our horses went lame so we were a horse short. So they took me, since I was the little one, and put me up on top of the pack of a horse called Prince, and he was a great big old thing, and I rode this pack horse up the mountain on top of the pack and these people from Hollywood any time they see me or write or call or anything, they wanted to know how the gal on the pack was. These are the things that happen to people when you don't have airplanes and all these things that you can pick up somebody down here and 20 take them up there and drop them off, you know. In those days you didn't do that kind of thing. BB: Well, it certainly does sound interesting. Can you think of anything else that you might want to add? DV: Well, I'll tell you there's...you know maybe this is kind of rude, but you hear people telling about how "Oh, we went out and we really roughed it out there" and, you know, well, they've got their campers, they've got their hot and cold water and they've got their stoves and such as this. I wonder if a lot of people really know what the term "roughing it" means. Now, to me, it means going out horse back. You don't have any hot and cold water or don't have any electric lights. You cook your food on a campfire, spread your blanket down on the ground and sleep on the blanket and put your saddle under your head for a pillow. Then you get up the next morning and pack this all up and move on and, to me, I have to laugh when I hear people now days say how they roughed it. All this stuff they have now days to go camping with and this is the thing and this is the way we used to have to get around down there cause you had no hot running water anywhere or had no electricity anywhere. BB: How did you cook, open fire? DV: We just had a little camp stove that you burn wood in. I'll tell you one more little thing and then I'm going to quit. My mother was with me and we had gone down there and had the children with us and Clark had to go back to Escalante to get another load of cattle they'd bring down so that they could drop them down to where the camp was. I wasn't especially nervous about staying down there, you know, just me and the kids and mother. It was far enough away from everything that I felt like we were fairly safe there. 21 In the middle of the night the horses stampeded and took out a panel of fence and went flying off down through the sage brush and I got up and went out to see what it was all about. Well, there was just nothing I could do about it. The horses were gone. The panel of fence was gone. So my mother decided there was a panther or a cat or something up on a little ridge, bench, or something up above the pasture. Well, we went back to bed and we locked everything up, nailed the windows down, the door shut and all such as this so nothing could molest us, you know. In the morning I got up and took a big pan of grain, and we had one old horse that just couldn't resist a pan full of grain and so I caught him so I could go get the rest of the horses. I went back in the cabin and we were preparing breakfast for the kids and us, and all at once there came this knock at the door. I looked at mother, and she looked at me. I had a hotcake turner in my hand and she had a butcher knife in hers and she says, "Now you go answer the door, I'll be right behind you." When I went and opened the door there stood the darnedest looking critter you ever seen in your life, and he began to say, "Now Dora, don't be afraid, now Dora, don't be afraid, I'm a neighbor of yours", and he had been snowed in over in Navajo Canyon. For four months he had never seen a human being. He could neither get out, nor nobody could get in to him, and it was his sheep upon the bench that had scared and stampeded the horses. BB: Oh my, and he had just come out after four months? DV: I think that's one of the more amazing things that happened to me while I was down there, this thing. It’s funny now, you can laugh at it now, you know, but right at that time it was a little bit on the scary side. BB: I can imagine. 22 DV: Now if you want to ask any more questions you have to wait until Val comes back and you can ask him. BB: OK. Well, I sure thank you Mrs. Veater, I want to remind everybody that we're talking to Mrs. Dora Veater and she and her husband, Clark, settled, lived, in this area that is now presently Hole-in-the-Rock. Now, I would like to thank you again. DV: You’re very welcome, I hope that the material I have given you will be of some help in your class. BB: Oh, I'm sure it will be and I did want to mention just before we cut the tape off that we were going to talk about this article that had been mentioned previously, but we have covered everything in it so we'll just leave it at that. If anybody is interested, it was the September 10th issue 1950, in the Deseret News Magazine. It was a supplement to the newspaper at that time in Salt Lake City. 23