For a good many years, I have written here about outdoor exploits across the nation, many having occurred in the mountain west where exists my favorite hunting ground that makes up much of northwestern Colorado. The area consisting of the western half of Moffat County, Colorado is the center of the land that fascinates me.

This part of our world has some good fishing in its streams and lakes. But it is the game animals, elk, mule deer, bear, mountain lions and pronghorns that call me back again and again. And what are even greater attractants are the area’s history, geography and its people. Here I offer readers a description of the area from which future stories from my desk are sure to come. 

Perhaps oddly, an insect first took me there. The Mormon cricket perennially damages rangeland grasses and hay crops in the remote hills and I managed the impact of these migrating insects. This work brought me lifelong friends thereabouts and a love of their environment.

Boyd and Wanda Walker owned “The Brown Place” and some land along Vermillion Creek, acreage along waterways granted to early settlers who had ventured west while the East and South were being settled. The large basin, known as Brown’s Park today (a park in the mountain west is a large opening in a forest) was called Brown’s Hole, and was settled by half a dozen ranchers. Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch had a hideout here as well as one in Utah and one in Wyoming.

Few areas in the West are more remote. The Brown Place, where I camped for hunting until my health worsened, is more than 100 miles from a hospital and shopping. In wet or snowy weather, the roads to the ranch are not passable until they freeze. The Walkers’ daughter, Dawn, lives there and runs the ranch. There is no electricity to the area so Dawn utilizes a generator.

Brown’s Park is bordered on the north by Cold Spring Mountain and on the south by Diamond Mountain. These are flat top mountains, likely shaved flat by early glaciers. Ridges are forested by juniper (cedar), and aspens with scattered pines. Nutritious grasses and sagebrush cover the lowland. One year when I lived in Colorado, the temperature reached 60 below zero in Moffat County.

Cattle are driven to lowlands from the lush mountain basins in September or October (huge cattle drives) and wintered on hay in large lots. This is branding time and when calves weighing 600 to 800 pounds are sold to buyers who park 18 wheelers nearby. Neighbors help each other with the cattle drives.

For years the Walkers’ nearest neighbor was 25 miles away. An occasional dance is held in a barn or the old schoolhouse (no longer used) and the younger folks put on clean jeans and their best boots and gather on Saturday nights. The few children are bused to schools sometimes 50 or more miles to Vernal, Utah or Maybell, Colo. Children have to move to town or live with relatives to attend the upper grades.

There are not enough people to form churches. Most ranchers in these remote areas are Mormon by birth and call themselves “Jack Mormons”; those who do not attend a church. Seven days a week, they work cattle and fix fences on the rented government land; the fences regularly torn down by elk herds.