The West is full of stories. Perhaps more than its fair share, given its relatively short role in American history. Few stories match the grandeur and gravitas of the old outlaws, who had a knack for hiding out in some of the prettiest places in the area. In fact, one outlaw made a semi-permanent hideout along the banks of my favorite river—the Green.
Butch and Sundance
Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch roamed largely throughout Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, pulling off train robberies and bank heists throughout the region. They were legendary for stealing without killing anyone, and numerous historical accounts back up the fact that Cassidy himself never shot the people he was robbing. Members of the Wild Bunch likely weren’t as careful, but Cassidy made it a point to be friendly during robberies.
As they hauled their loot from place to place, rustled cattle, and got up to other outlaw mischief, they consistently found themselves needing a place to lie low and relax.
Brown’s Park became a go-to location since it’s remote and surrounded on all sides by steep mountains. Oh, and the Green River flows right through the valley, as well.
The Green wasn’t the trophy trout fishery it is now, back in Cassidy’s day, but the river probably provided food, and another line of defense against lawmen and the Pinkerton detectives.
Brown’s Park
Brown’s Park is a long valley that sits in both Utah and Colorado. It’s a quiet, almost oddly still place, even at the height of fishing season along the Green River.
The lowest section of the Green River in Utah, the C-Section, flows from Indian Crossing to Brown’s Park. It has the lowest trout-per-mile count in the entire river (the A-Section, the first 7 miles below Flaming Gorge Dam, boasts over 12,000 trout per mile), but the largest fish are consistently caught down on C.
A float through this milder section of the river takes you back through time, and the landscape is largely unchanged from Cassidy’s day. It’s one of the few places in the West that’s still completely wild, a true glimpse into the past.
At its height, Brown’s Park was almost a bustling place. It had enough traffic, even without the outlaws, that Scottish immigrant John Jarvie built a ranch in 1880. His ranch had a store, post office, river ferry, and cemetery. Jarvie’s house was built by outlaw Jack Bennet, and the house still stands today.
Even with the historic buildings still standing, it’s hard to overstate just how quiet, calm, and removed from the real world Brown’s Park is. Access isn’t easy—the road is notoriously awful during rain—and I think it’s best explored by boat anyway. Moving at the river’s pace, you have the chance to appreciate the landscape for what it is: that wide-open, sprawling beauty that drew so many people West, not all that long ago.
Heading North
Brown’s Park is one of the more famous outlaw hideouts and probably has the best fly fishing of them all. But if you venture further north into Wyoming, you’ll run into a landscape that changes from low alpine to high desert. It’s nothing but sagebrush as far as the eye can see. That is, until you arrive at a river flowing through the remnants of a mining boom town.
There’s less direct evidence that outlaws frequented these parts, but mining towns weren’t exactly known as bastions of clean living. And this particular river is on the way to other spots in Wyoming that Cassidy and other outlaws frequented, so it’s likely he wandered through these parts.
But it has that same aged aura Brown’s Park emanates, as though the landscape has absorbed all the events, held onto them, and lets them permeate the air. The fishing isn’t bad, either.
Modern Outlaws
We don’t rob banks or hold up trains (at least, none of my friends do), but there’s something about fly fishing for trout, particularly in the West, that draws out an odd crowd. When you plan your life around hatches and runoff, you operate with the same frenetic energy outlaws did when they were just trying to survive.
The West is full of stories, of ghosts, of events long since forgotten and lost to history. But the outlaws have a romantic pull to them, and I’m not sure what it says about our society at large that we still frequent the places where lawbreakers used to go to “get away from it all.”
I guess even outlaws need a day off, though, and what better place to do it than next to a trout stream?