What Lies Beneath

By Bennett Owen

Do we really need any more evidence that everything’s big in Texas? Those million acre fires may be out but the drought that fueled them lingers in THE worst and longest dry spell the Lone Star State has ever recorded. A friend near Austin laments she usually has the fireplace roaring at Thanksgiving … this year the air conditioner was still on full blast.

One unforeseen silver lining is that history is revealing itself throughout the region as man-made lakes recede in the face of the very drought conditions they were supposed to ameliorate. And so, long forgotten villages like Bluffton are revealed for a short while.

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Follow this link to see a video of Bluffton.

This gravestone marks the burial plot of a boy who died just short of his first birthday in 1882.

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Further north, Lake Texoma has dried up enough to expose Old Woodville, Oklahoma…

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An historic railroad town, legend has it that Bonnie and Clyde attended the cock fights here, camping out at a place called Washita Point –

Bonnie and Clyde, March 1933. Credit: Wikipedia

A retreating reservoir in Navarro County, south of Dallas has uncovered an antebellum slave cemetery…

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And along the southwest border, Falcon Lake has receded enough that the ghost town of Guerrero Viejo is accessible, including its impressive church, Nuestra Señora del Refugio. Unfortunately, it’s also virtually a no-go area due to the drug cartels. Please go to the website for more incredible images.

Credit: hectorastorga.wordpress.com

Credit: hectorastorga.wordpress.com

Seems sometimes it’s just one dam thing after another.  In my part of the world, the Clark Canyon Reservoir sits atop what used to be Armstead, Montana, a rough and tumble outpost that, in the early decades of the 20^th century, had bragging rights as the biggest cattle shipping point on the Union Pacific Railroad.  Cattlemen out on Horse Prairie, the Big Hole, the Grasshopper, Blacktail and Centennial would trail their herds into Armstead for loading on a one-way eastward journey to the great feedlots and slaughterhouses of Chicago.    

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One of Armstead’s honored residents was a champion rodeo rider named Alvin Owen who worked four jobs during the depression to keep his wife and two sons fed and who once beat a man to a bloody pulp for calling him a liar, the worst of all insults.  That gave rise to his youngest son’s oft-repeated threat, “be careful what you say or my Daddy will beat the hell outta you!” 

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Soft spoken, affable, yet resolute, Alvin Owen went on to found a trucking company that supported Southwest Montana’s economy for well over half a century.  His legacy lives on, though not too many people could pinpoint Armstead anymore. 

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What I remember of the town is limited to the Hershey Bars I’d get at the general store when we drove out for a visit. By the time I was six we were riding over the town in an outboard motorboat. A couple of times since then, water levels have dropped enough to reveal parts of the old highway, the railroad bed and some building foundations. But what’s scarce in Texas is plentiful in Montana. So for now at least, Armstead remains buried in a watery grave.

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We Bearly Knew Ya’ – 10 Surprising Facts About Yellowstone

By Bennett Owen

As part of the My-West fall road trip, we took an early October swing through snow-capped Yellowstone Park…no lines, no traffic jams…and no lollygagging either, because it was freakin’ COLD! The kids will most likely remember one very photogenic chipmunk, a few snowball fights and the view of Yellowstone Falls from Artist’s Point, which suitably blew away the CGI saturated munchkins. 

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In an effort to entertain and enlighten the kids en route, I uncovered some things about Yellowstone that entertained and enlightened me more than anyone else and since they didn’t impress the kids I’m trying ten of them out on you:

10 – Tiny little Isa Lake is the only body of water that empties into both sides of the Continental Divide…feeding both the Missouri and mighty Columbia rivers.

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9 – Redwoods once grew in Yellowstone. Geologists say the Petrified Tree near Tower Junction is “anatomically indistinguishable from modern Redwoods growing today along the California coast.”

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8 – Gardner, Montana at the north entrance of Yellowstone is located directly on the 45^th parallel…halfway between the Equator and the North Pole.

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7 – There is an appropriately named ‘Mae West’ curve on the Grand Loop Road near the Antelope Creek overlook.

Mae West Curve. Credit: mccormacka

6 - You can tell the temperature of the water by the color of the algae. Bright yellow survives at 160 F, while the green stuff means the water temperature is a mere 120 F.

Morning Glory Pool. Credit: jpc.raleigh

5 – That thing hanging from a Moose’s neck is called a Dewlap.

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4 – Bill Clinton was the last of eight presidents who visited Yellowstone Park while in office.

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3 - Steamboat Geyser is the highest erupting geyser in the world, shooting water as high as 400 feet.

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2 – The fastest animal found in Yellowstone is the Pronghorn Antelope, with top speeds of 50 MPH…slightly slower than ME after spotting a Grizzly Bear.

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1-    Yellowstone Park is not only the first US national park but the world’s first as well, and sparked a global effort to preserve and maintain places of rare natural beauty.

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Post Script

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We're just back from our road trip through Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Along the way we passed through about a hundred small towns. And one thing they all have in common is a one-room post office. Here are a few more to add to our prior post, Post Modern Mails.

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Post Modern Mails

By Bennett Owen

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My family’s ranch is still pretty remote by today’s standards. By that I mean it is one of the few places left where it’s impossible to get a cell phone connection.  An Uncle recently discovered the only hot spot in the valley but depending on the season you’ll need either a four-wheel drive or a snowmobile to get there.

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What the valley DOES have is a post office. Aunt Mary is Postmaster and the single employee at zip code ----- and the ‘stage’ is still a lifeline to the outside world. But wireless Internet has also reached rural America and that’s mighty stiff competition.

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Snow and rain and heat and gloom of night are one thing. A party line is another.  But the Internet Cloud is a whole ‘nother kind of monster.

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The USPS is deeply in debt, based largely on plummeting demand in the Email age. Statistics show that over half of all bills are paid Online…”the check’s in the mail” is increasingly becoming, “the binary transfer is on the ether.” 

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The USPS plans to shutter as many as 37-hundred affiliates in an effort to regain solvency…85 of those are scattered throughout Montana and in some cases closure will leave patrons up to 60 miles away from the next post office.  As one customer in Dixon, Montana said, “a town without a post office becomes a ghost town.”  Not that we have anything against ghost towns, but…

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…The My-West team is fighting back in our own small way. The next great My-West road trip gets underway on October first and anyone who sends us an address will receive a greeting card, sent from one of the post offices pictured here. Now that’s a special delivery.  Do it for fun! Do it for nostalgia! Do it for…Aunt Mary!

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The Five Loneliest Roads in the West

By Bennett Owen

“Who loves loneliness loves it alone …”

-    Robert Hunter         

To paraphrase the nursery rhyme, ‘solitude is very sad – outta gas is twice as bad.’ With that in mind, you might want to top off the tank before you try the following five highways. In fact, you’ll more likely spot a UFO than oncoming traffic:

5. I-94 in North Dakota – From Moorhead on the Minnesota border to Miles City, Montana – 400 miles of flat and endless prairie, with only the state capital, Bismarck to break up the monotony.  Well, that and ‘Salem Sue’, the world’s largest Holstein milk cow…a 38 foot high monument to the local dairy industry…perched upon the only hill you’ll see in the next hundred miles.

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4. US 95 from Blythe to Needles, is considered the loneliest highway in California with no major towns and mostly barren desert with little sign of human activity. But the road DOES have bragging rights as one of the only highways stretching all the way from Mexico to Canada. For a leg stretcher, check out the “Blythe Intaglios”, some massive ancient drawings embedded into the desert floor…also described as “one of the few redeeming features of Blythe, California…”

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3. US 395 from Lakeview to Riley, in south-central Oregon. Starting just across the California state line, this route takes you through some very bleak high desert country.  One recent traveler reports, “I didn’t see more than two cars in 100 miles,” although he admits it was midweek! But if it’s lonely landscapes you’re after there is much to be had. And like bookends, the only two roadside attractions are the ‘Manmade Geyser’ in Lakeview and the ‘Big Ball of Twine’ in Burns.

This area is so remote, we couldn’t find a picture, its seems that even the Geyser has run out of steam.

2. US 278/43 from Dillon, Montana to Lost Trail Pass, Idaho. You will follow the Lewis and Clark trail through some of the most picturesque mountain scenery you have ever encountered. But keep your eye on the road because you will also see road kill. Lots of it. Skunks, porcupines, antelope, deer … the moose tend to walk away from such altercations. The loneliness sets in at about Badger Pass, with long stretches of natural nothingness all the way to Idaho. You’ll want to stop at the Big Hole Battlefield, where the great Nez Perce warrior Chief Joseph taught a tactical thing or two to the US Cavalry.

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1.     And yet another hat tip here to our My-West man on the road, RJ Burns. Most people will tell you that highway 50, running west to east through Nevada, is truly the loneliest road in the US. But RJ tells us it’s bumper to bumper compared to route 305, running north and south, from Battle Mountain to Austin, Nevada. As he describes it … ”88 miles and I have never seen anyone out there.”  In fact it’s so lonesome there’s not even a roadside attraction. The nearest is “White King, The World’s Largest Polar Bear” in Elko. But that’s a long ways away.

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So, and now it’s your turn! Send us your suggestions for lonely road honors … always better if you provide the pictures to prove it. We’ll post the best of the bunch!

Signing off with “It’s a Long Lonely Highway” by Elvis Presley ...