Robbers Roost

The Wild Bunch hideout the law could not enter; still hard country

Robbers Roost is a maze of plateau and slickrock canyon in southeastern Utah, east of Hanksville, draining into the Dirty Devil River, and in the closing years of the Old West it was the hideout of Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch. It suited them because the ground was rough, easily defended and hard to enter without being seen, and a gang that needed a month or longer to lie low after a robbery could rest there. It was here that Cassidy and his closest friend, Elzy Lay, first formed the Wild Bunch.

The gang built cabins against the hard winters and kept weapons, horses, chickens and cattle, supplied with fresh horses and beef through friendly contacts, above all the ranch of the outlaw sisters Ann and Josie Bassett. The members held one another to strict silence about where it was, and by most accounts the lawmen chasing them never found the hideout itself. Only five women are known to have been let in: the Bassett sisters, Etta Place, the Sundance Kid's girlfriend, Maude Davis, one of Lay's girlfriends, and the gang member Laura Bullion. Charlie Siringo wrote that the Wild Bunch used twenty-dollar gold pieces for poker chips there, and that the Roost served as their headquarters until Joe Bush and a posse of Salt Lake City officers raided it and killed some of the gang. Robbers Roost Canyon, a remote tributary of the Dirty Devil, carries the name, and Zane Grey set a novel, Robbers' Roost, nearby.

Other outlaws left their names too. Bluejohn Canyon, a slot about 11 miles long that runs north-northeast from the Robbers Roost Flats toward Horseshoe Canyon, is probably named for John Griffith, a 19th-century horse thief with one blue eye and one brown, known as Blue John. In 2003 it became known worldwide when Aron Ralston, his right forearm pinned by a boulder, cut it off with a multi-tool after five days, the story of the film 127 Hours.

The Roost is now prime canyoneering country, with steep, narrow slots, a sharp divide between the plateau, the slots and the wide canyons below, and a strong no-bolt tradition of natural anchors. Spring and fall are the seasons for it, when the slots may hold cold water. It rewards the self-reliant: carry plenty of water and leave word of your route.