Butch Cassidy was a nice Mormon boy from Utah who fell in with the a bad crowd, robbed banks and trains, had death defying adventures, founded the Wild Bunch and the Outlaw Trail, made lotsa money, and barely escaped with his life (depending on which legend you chose to believe).
In the summer of ’65, my BYU friend Ray Smith insisted we should go to Wyoming, work in the oil field as roughnecks, have great adventures, make lotsa money, and well you know the rest. Sounded good to me, what could possibly go wrong?
Five hours after leaving Provo Utah in my faithful ’55 Ford, Rock Springs, WY appeared along with a sign that said:
DON’T TELL MY FOLKS I WORK IN THE OIL PATCH. THEY THINK I’M A PIANO PLAYER IN A WHORE HOUSE
That should ‘a been a tip off. After some embellishments as to our experience level, we were offered jobs in Baggs, Wyoming, as part of a crew that, I swear, were all on the run from various southern states. No one had real names, other than “Slim,” “Shorty,” “Butt Head,” or other such handles.
The “pusher,” as the driller is called, had only been able to raise eight guys, so four of us would work 12 hour shifts, noon to midnight, and four guys the reverse, seven days a week. What the heck, we’re here to make money, right?
We were to run a “workover rig” which was already set up on an existing well, and the hope was to coax that well back to life.
Baggs was probably not on anyone’s list of tourist destinations, with one dirt street, a laundromat, a gas station/food store, and a post office. It did have one claim to fame though. The Western Hotel was the hotel/brothel where Butch Cassidy and his gang hid out after robbing the Union Pacific east of Rock Springs.
When word got out that a bunch of guys with saddle bags full of money were in town, all the “professional ladies,” and probably a few semi-pros too, flocked to the Western.
The scene where the posse rides up and asks the proprietor of the Western if he’s seen the Wild Bunch, while Butch watches from an upstairs window actually took place. Fer sher nobody wanted that damn sheriff ruinin’ the party.
When we started work on the rig, Ray went on one ½ of the crew and I went with the other. A few days later on my shift the drill bit mysteriously “cratered,” which means it fell apart. Major delay and expense. Shortly after that, the drill operator named Buford, let a 1 ½ inch thick cable get loose from its anchor and it almost killed us. My ½ of the crew got fired (yea!). I left my few clothes behind in Baggs, hitchhiked to Rock Springs to get my Ford, and didn’t see Ray until months later at BYU.
By now I knowd a few folks in the orl biddness, so I hired on for a job at the Hiawatha Pumping Station, which is on the CO/WY border. Right on the Outlaw Trail near Browns Park, it’s an hour and a half on a two-track through the sage brush to the nearest anything. The pump station was run by Mountain Fuel Co and had about an 18-inch main line. It collected gas from miles around and pumped it to the Western states’ gas grid. There were three small bunk houses, and it was BYOB everything.
We only worked 40 hours a week, which seemed like a vacation. There were a couple of other college guys with other crews, so we began exploring the area. We also figured out how to run my low-compression, 6-cylinder Ford on “drip gas,” a byproduct of the natural gas wells. WAHOO! Free gas for the summer!
There were abandoned cabins, corrals, and dug outs everywhere, if you had the patience to look for them. A great place to hide out. You could see a posse coming for miles, and then either disappear or lay a clever trap for them.
Inside one particularly remote cabin, I found a denim jacket, which had been patched and patched again with a single needle. No new fabric added. It had been hanging on a nail for a very long time, judging by the newspapers pasted over the cracks in the walls. I like to think whoever found the body lying on the floor gave it a decent burial and just left the jacket behind.
The rig I was working on was drilling a new well, so it was several times the size of the previous “workover.” The crew was also MUCH more professional, they had most of their fingers and teeth, and spoke in complete sentences. The “pusher” and I got along, so he assigned me to take care of the four motors on the rig, which I quite enjoyed.
There were two skid-mounted Waukesha motors powering the mud pumps. Their radiator caps were 10 feet off the ground. The two motors powering the drill table were 6-cylinder supercharged two strokes made by General Motors. Each cylinder displaced 71 cubic inches, thus they were known as a 6-71 GMC, very popular as bus powerplants. Everything ran on propane from a very large tank set up about 50 yards from the rig.
Once, I noticed all the guys on my crew sprinting as fast as they could, in their rubber boots and coveralls, toward the entrance of our little valley. I quickly decided to join them. The genius delivering a load of propane had ripped the supply hose from our tank and the valley was quickly filing with a fog of explosive vapor!
As we watched from a distance, the motors all died for lack of fuel and the only sound was the loud hiss of propane. Somebody (not me) decided since there was probably no ignition source, he could safely run back into the fog and shut off the main valve.
That job eventually came to an end, and the pusher said if I wanted to finish out the summer, I could go to work in Jeffery City, WY. Jeff City as the locals call it, claimed the distinction of having the last bar in WY to have swinging doors. It was a stop on the Outlaw Trail, about two days by saddle south of Thermopolis (Thermop) where Butch and the gang often hid out in the OWL bar while planning their next caper.
I don’t think I was ever happier to leave a place than Jeff City, well except for leaving the Army, and Provo never looked so good.
In 1968/9 Robert Redford filmed Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (Bob played Sundance and Paul played Butch) and Bob used the considerable money he earned to buy and develop the Sundance Resort near Provo. His first wife Lola is/was from Provo.
The resort had to have a bar, and Bob wanted to call it the OWL, of course. He heard through a friend of a friend that when the original OWL was knocked or fell down, an old timer had dismantled the actual bar and stored it in a tumble down shed in Thermop.
Of course, Redford HAD to have it. Legend says it wouldn’t all fit into his rental truck, so Bob strapped a few pieces to the top of his car. He had a Porsche 911 Carrera Targa with a ski rack at the time, so I guess that’s possible.
The bar’s not real big, made of Rose Wood, built around 1890, and has some fun stories associated with it (bullet holes and such).
I stopped by when the OWL was completed. A warm, wonderful place, with some very nice folks. As the evening got late it occurred to me that I’d started and ended my Butch Cassidy adventure in Provo, Utah.
Sometimes things just work out.
Thanks for the great story. I camped along the Green River in Brown’s Park area on a fishing trip with my boys. I remember crawling into my sleeping bag and thinking, in total blackness except stars, “wow this place is really REMOTE”. What a great place to disappear.
Your work mate, Ray Smith was my Dodo Master when I pledged CAA (the TauSig group), my Freshman year, in early 1966.
“We are the Dodo’s of ’66,
there are no others that compare,
We all are brothers, we stick together,
Even though we had to loose our hair.”
I had to present his wife with fresh flowers every day.
One evening he called to tell me his ulcer was acting up and only raw milk would calm it down.
Do you know where to get raw milk at this time of the evening Dodo?
I’d try the BYU dairy farm if I were you Dodo. Oh Dodo, I know how to tell if it’s raw milk, it separates.
I acquired the raw milk for him and just to make sure he knew it was raw I placed a little “cow pie” in it for good measure.
I could go on, but its late.