Bluff

Similar to just about everyone I knew in Flagstaff in the 1980's, I was introduced to Bluff, Utah, because of river running on the San Juan River.  EVERYBODY and their aunt, uncle, sister, brother, infant kids, dogs and who else who knows ran the San Juan River.  It was tough to get in trouble on the San Juan although some people periodically found a way, so to speak.

Susun and I have been through Bluff more times than we can remember. Despite 40 years of experience with Bluff, I never really knew the true depths of the "Bluff Back Story".  Sure, everybody knows Bluff was birthed by the Hole-In-The-Rockers.  But I never went past that factoid.  I never looked deeper.

A couple of years ago, for whatever reason, I found myself digging deeper in Bluff's remarkable history. Of course, it's far too long a story to retell here.  Essentially, what I found was that the early Bluffites had a far harder existence than what I had ever dreamed.  Also, I learned that the Bluffites looked at themselves almost as a separate culture.  Those who were original Hole-In-The-Rockers (or first generation descendants) looked at other people, even Brother and Sister Saints, as "different" even to the point of treating them as "outsiders".

Meanwhile, I learned the original Hole-In-The-Rockers hadn't been "called" in the normal sense that other settlement parties were "called".  Indeed the Hole-In-The-Rockers had been called as part of an almost impossible "Peace Mission".  They were viewed by The Church as a "shock-absorber" between the Navajo and Paiute Natives as well as the rampant lawless population of Southeast Utah.  Although nowhere in the historical record is the word "expendable" used, I personally get the distinct drift that how the Bluffites were viewed.

In addition to having to face down angry, larcenous Natives as well as often murderous cowboys, Bluffites faced yet another insurmountable foe--The San Juan River itself.  No matter what the Bluff pioneers did to draw irrigation water from the river, the San Juan laughed in their faces and destroyed their back-breaking work.

It seemed as if at every turn, Bluffites faced yet more insurmountable obstacles.  And there was no one but themselves to help them.  No wonder they set themselves apart from everyone else.  Just getting to Bluff on April 6, 1880, was easily the most gut-wrenching desert, dryland expedition of all time.

It turns out that the "Fight For The San Juan" (as an early pioneer labeled it) took FORTY THREE years and wasn't finally settled until The Posey War of 1923.

We haven't been through Bluff since October 2021.  That was shortly before I began the study which "re-educated" me about Bluff. I can't imagine ever looking at Bluff the same way I did prior to that study.  It's going to be very interesting to visit there again this October.

Photos have additional captions.

While Bluff appears to be a bucolic backwater in far Southeast Utah, it was once the epicenter of struggles between settlers, Navajos, Paiutes, outlaws and the river itself.

The many outlaws who filtered into remote Southeast Utah were truly a wild bunch and represented an impossible challenge.  One of the original Hole-In-The-Rockers was a young man named Willard George William Butt. He was a stalwart, tireless member of the rough expedition.  While still in his 20's he was elected as San Juan County's first Sheriff and came to be known and locally loved as "Dick Butt".  Butt took on the outlaws singlehandedly and won.  He was completely beyond fearless.  He had no Deputies and no backup and he often outsmarted outlaws just by bluffing his way to their capture (pun intended).  We plans to do a Eulogy at his gravesite in Bluff.  In the photo, the image at left was created in St. George in the 1870's before the expedition.  The image at right dates to an approx. time after his service as Sheriff.

We spent 4.5 months May-October 2001 serving as volunteers for the Dixie National Forest.  Our job was to produce a newsletter and website for the Upper Sevier River Community Watershed Project.  Our quarters were at the old 1930's Cowpuncher Guard Station 45 minutes north of Escalante on the Hell's Backbone Road.  As a result, we became smitten with the Hole-In-The-Rock Expedition and that's how we learned one of our favorite soundbites. It's written as you see above but it's pronounced Sticky-Tee-Too-Tee.  Jense Nielson foisted that phrase off on the Expedition members any time they lost their nerve or resolve.  He had participated in found six other pioneer settlements and he simply wouldn't accept the idea that anything was impossible.  Jense served as Bluff's Bishop until 1906 and remains a legendary and revered member of the Bluff Legacy.

A remarkable photo record of early Bluff from the early 1890's to around 1910 was created by Bluff's only non-Mormon resident, Charles Goodman.  We have only included a few of Goodman's images in this post.  He had a remarkable eye for the stuff that we modern people would love to see and ponder about Old Bluff.

Goodman surfed ashore on the banks of the San Juan River as part of the wild and crazy gold rush of the early 1890's.  It is estimated about 3,000 people for all walks of life and all locations swarmed through Bluff on their way to easy riches downriver.  Of course, the gold rush was all a mirage and most of those fortune seekers left just about as fast as they had shown up.  Goodman was an exception.  He threw down his lot in Bluff and moved into one of the original cabins (shown above).  He stayed in Bluff 20 years from 1892-1912 and is buried in the local cemetery.  You can read a lot about him here:
https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=422059

Goodman had a distinctive style of inscriptions he placed on his negatives.  This is one of his early photos in Bluff.  That's probably Jense Nielson at right.

Luckily, Goodman captured more than just the nut and bolts and landscape views of the Bluff community.  We plan to do a Eulogy for Goodman at his Bluff gravesite and we're going to work some comments about this photo into our speech.

Of course, Goodman was really a good man at creating images showcasing the nuts and bolts.

The local Navajo Natives were some truly "tough customers" for the Bluffites.  Goodman has a knack be being able to photograph the notoriously camera-shy Navajos.

And Goodman was also a "good man" at the scenes we want to see.  Bluff has become gentrified in the past 40 years.  Gone are the days when it was a religious enclave.  Outsiders have reworked the whole Bluff mystique and ambiance factor.  It's more of a nano-mini-Telluride than the closed community of yesteryear.