Dry Canyon Dawn

Northern San Rafael Style Fremont 750 A.D. to 1250 A.D.
Nine Mile Canyon, Carbon County

High above Dry Canyon, a tributary to Minnie Maud Creek, these lovely bighorn sheep march north to south.  Do they represent the Fremont travelers?  Celebrate a coming hunt? A prayer for rain?  

When I photographed these carved sheep, I looked down into a peaceful valley with a narrow dirt road, a stream, a few cows and deep grass.  Now, the mouth of Dry Canyon hosts an industrial site: trailers, a large noisy compressor station, out buildings, bare muddy slopes, no cows, no grass and a dirty stream.  The local rancher sold his property to the Bill Barrett Corporation.  I asked him why he sold.  He said he was pressured; that he was told it was his patriotic duty to convert his ranch into a natural gas development. 

In 2003 the BBC claimed that they would build a small compressor station at Dry Canyon which would blend into the environment.  Instead they built a noisy dirty industrial complex.