The Daily Sentinel from Grand Junction, Colorado • 44

1 i jo oj 7 -3 ryestfem a erScciiiia rni stfaraijpedle at chase was on. Five miles up Thompson Canyon the panting steers were halted and turned back toward the pens, or what was left of them. LARIATS WERE STRETCHED across the downed corral opening, and canvas tarps from bedrolls were draped over them to form a makeshift fence that might. Although tied, the steers were still spooky and Kelley and Wilcox beat the canvas with clubs to keep the jittery critters away from it every time a train came into the depot. It Hasnt thunder 0 the cowboys heard Fifty years, ago, there was good reason for the stock corrlas at the Denver Rio Grande railhead at Thompson, Utah, to have every post braced on the outside.

All it took was the hiss of coalburning locomotive breathing out steam or the hollow clang of a cattle car being shunted onto a siding to get a first-rate stampede started. Those hefty corral posts arent needed anymore however. The corrals full of bawling cattle and bleating sheep along the in south- eatern Utah are a thing of the past. By Mrs. Edwin Wilcox Sentinel Corretpondent CORRALS AT GREEN RIVER, Woodside and Cisco have been removed, little by little, the last five years.

And now the loading chutes and corrals at Thomspn are being dismantled by the Green River squad of the Emery County Jeep Posse. The men hope to sell the of weathered 2 by 6 planks to builders for rustic design. The 30-ton capacity scales will be left at the siding until May 1. But those corrals received heavy use for many shunting many thousands of tons of lamb and beef on the hoof to packing plants and thwarting many a budding stampede. THERE WAS AT LEAST one stampede the stout couldnt handle, however.

It was some time before World War II, and Bounds Interests of Hanksville had drifted 1,200 head of drouth-poor steers from Wayne County 100 miles north to the Book Mountains. Come fall, the steers that survived were rolling fat from eating knee-high mountain grass and obstinately independent from being allowed to range free over the 55 miles from Moon Water to Pioche. But the fall roundup was made, with Dan Kelly as foreman. Others on the drive from Pioche Pasture down the Cliff Trail to Thompson Canyon and into Thompson were Bill Bounds Sr. and his sons Bill Alton and Milo; and Henry Wilcox, Bill Gri-thers and Mace Green.

THE CORRALS and loading chutes were half a mile east of Thompson depot and north of the tracks, where the acid plant now stands. Daytimes, small bunches of steers were choused out of the pens and allowed to graze on the plain near town, then all were penned up at night awaiting arrival of the cattle cars for shipment. With 500 head in the big pen and 300 in smaller corrals, a long wait, sultry weather and boogery steers, a stampede was inevitable. A switch engine sorting out empty cars shunted one down a side track where it slammed into a string of empties. Like a spark in gunpowder, the hollow clang of the couplings was followed by a thunderous roar of hooves.

Steers in the main pen hit the corral side with one mind to get back to the cool, lush solitude of the mountains. THE FENCE WAS MADE of 2 by 6 planks, anchored to posts set four feet into the ground and braced from the outside. The braces acted as little more than a fulcrum to help up-root the posts when the tons of beef hit them, however. The fence was flattened and splintered. Broken horns littered the ground.

A kid ran from the train side of the empty corrals, shouting that it wasnt thunder the yarn swapping cowboys had heard. Horses were mounted as fast as cinches could be tightened and the The next morning, two trainloads of slightly lighter cattle were on their way to Kansas City slaughter houses. There have been many other trainloads of livestock shipped from those pens, from the time the railroad was built in 1883 until two years ago. Producers from the Books to the Arizona border have made many trail drives to the scattered railheads and from there to market. Redd Ranches at La Sal, Utah, was one of the heaviest users of the old corrals, sometimes moving as many as 50,000 lambs from Utah range to wheat pasturing in Kansas.

Most lambs were loaded at Thompson or -Cisco, with some yearlings taken to Mack for transport to De Beque or As- pen. Hardy Redd said his ranch last used the. pens in 1967, due largely to the stress of unloading stock at- Thompson, then putting them on of- jf ten slow trains, long waits for the g-trains, and loading and unloading ev- ery 24 and 36 hours for feeding and watering. Trucks are faster and eas- ier, with less effect on the he said. 5.