Thompson and Sego Canyons

From the mouth of Thompson Canyon you can hear the horn of the train and the power of the engine from three miles away. The railroad, which now completely bypasses the little town of Thompson Springs, once was at the heart of Sego Canyon. Until the 1950's, a spur of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad began at Thompson Springs and went up Thompson Canyon and into Sego Canyon where it loaded up on coal from the mines. At that time, Sego was a thriving little town of several hundred people. Now, no one lives in the town of Sego, except for the wild animals and ghosts of the past.

I spent the night in Thompson Canyon, listening to the sounds of the wind and trains. I drove up the canyon soon after first light and was immediately surprised when a small herd of deer crossed the road in front of me, a nice four-point buck with them. This reminded me that I was in big buck country. Absolutely no one was in the canyon that morning, so I didn't hesitate to stop in the road to take pictures.

The buck seemed oblivious that I was there. He was just chasing the doe wherever she went; in and out of the sage brush, up the hill, around the trees, and across the road. This was November, and the rut was well on its way. Several other does were there also, but he only had his eye on the one.

A little further up the canyon I arrived at my first destination. High on the canyon wall, in three separate but proximate locations, are petroglyphs from three different Indian groups: Barrier Canyon, Fremont, and Ute.

The glyphs are very impressive. The Fremont and Barrier Canyon drawings are high enough that a ladder would be needed to create them. Many of the figures are life-sized. Two Fremont figures depict what looks like warriors adorned in war or other ceremonial dress. Several Barrier Canyon figures look like a cross between a ghost and an alien. Wavy lines give the appearance of floating in the air. I wonder if they are depicting spirits of the deceased. It is also interesting that both the Fremont and Barrier Canyon use upside down triangles, or near triangles, to depict the body, even though the two groups never knew each other and lived hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years apart.

Ute.

Fremont. (Notice they are etched over the top of  Barrier Canyon petroglyphs.)

Barrier Canyon Style.

Another interesting observation is the comparison of the three styles of drawing. If this were an art gallery (which it is), and I were to rate the three based on the pleasing of the eye, I would have to rate the Barrier Canyon first, Fremont second, and Ute last. This is ironic because Barrier Canyon is the oldest, and Ute the newest (some of the Ute even depict horses). It is as if something had been lost over time.

Further up the road, the course splits and the right fork leads to Sego Canyon and the ghost town of Sego. The last major relic left standing, the general store, appears majestic, but out of place in this isolated canyon. The roof is gone, the insides are gone, but stone walls, two-stories high, remain standing.

Next to the store are the remains of the collapsed boarding house. The pictures I saw showed an impressive house, two-storied with many windows. I was expecting to find the house still intact. Instead, I found a house completely razed, either by human or natural forces. Much of the roof still retained its original shape. It was as if someone took a gigantic bat and whacked out the middle section, causing the roof to drop to the ground.

Both the store and the boarding house were built around 1910 by the American Fuel Company after they bought the property from Harry Ballard, the original owner. Thus, the name of the town changed from Ballard to Neslin, after Richard Neslin, the general manager of the new company. Five years later, when business wasn't going so well, Neslin was fired, and naturally, the name of the town changed again, this time to Sego, after the sego lily, which abounded in the canyon.

Remnants of a railroad spur have survived in the canyon, primarily at points where it would have crossed the wash. Wooden bridges still stand, fully erect, without the rails. They are reminders of livelier days when enough coal was mined in the canyon to be brought out on trains.

A dugout.

Further up the canyon are several dugouts. The majority of Sego's five hundred residents lived in these modest dwellings carved into the side of the hill.

Much further off the road I found another brick building built into the side of a hill, but this one was much larger than the dugouts. It may have been a storage building. Inside there is nothing but a dirt floor and a square room with ample space to walk around.

My guess is that this dugout was used to store machinery.

The road up Sego Canyon continues another seven miles or so until it hits the Ute Indian Reservation. It is a reminder, once again, that this land was used by another people.

I decided to turn around. On my way down the canyon, two more nice bucks crossed the road in front of me. The bigger one disappeared into the trees, while the other buck stuck around and chased a doe. I watched him as he moseyed down a hill and found a large growth of brush where he raked and scraped his antlers on the branches. At one point I thought he got them stuck in the tangle of branches, but he pulled them out a couple of minutes later.

My final stop was at the cemetery. No ghost town would be complete without one of these. A barbed-wire fence surrounds this picturesque burial ground at the junction of Sego and Thompson Canyons. The majority of the plots are marked, but unidentified. Crude wooden crosses and piles of rock make up most of the grave markers.

This was difficult for me to comprehend. Buried here are men and women and children who lived lives as real as the one you and I are living. They laughed, cried, and hurt. They bore children who continued to bear children and right now live somewhere in this great world. But their descendents may no longer remember them. And if they were to come here, they would never be able to find their ancestor's grave, because nothing is marked. It is as if the inhabitants of Sego never existed.

Some of the dwellers here immigrated from Italy. One of the few marked headstones identifies a Giovanni Ascani, from Frontone, Italy. He died in 1918. A slab of rock identifies he Stortini baby who died in 1926.

Where are the Ascani and Stortini's now? Do they know that their grandparents mined coal in Sego Canyon? Which of the dugouts belonged to them? Or did they have a larger home, that no longer exits? Did they buy goods in the general store? Were they curious about the ghost-like writings painted on the walls in Thompson Canyon? Did they have dealings with the Ute's? Baby Stortini, did he or she die from harsh conditions made worse by isolation?

So many questions on my mind as I drive on down the road toward Thompson Springs.

Graveyard near the confluence of Thompson and Sego Canyons