Wednesday, February 6, 2008

The Winter of the Blue Snow

The evening of December 25, 1936, a group of we boys climbed in Uncle Fred's Dodge sedan and went to Kanab to a dance. It started to snow, and by the time we were ready to come home after the dance, it had snowed and drifted so much that we got stuck in Riggs Flat and had a rather difficult time getting home.

It kept snowing and blowing and turned so awfully cold. The fog was so thick you could hardly breathe. When the snow finally stopped, there was three feet on the level. The CCC Camp at Pipe Springs tried to keep the road open from there to Fredonia with a cat-tractor, and the men at Moccasin built a drag. They hooked two or three teams to this and tried to open the road to Pipe. They didn't have much success because of the wind and drifting snow. The fences had so much frost hanging to the wire that it looked like a solid wall.

The men became very worried about the cattle on the range, so one day they saddled their horses and attempted to go to Cedar Ridge and the Moonshine Pasture. Each would take a turn in the lead to break a trail through the snow - the snow being so deep as to strike the horses at the chest with our feet dragging in the snow. Uncle Ed was in the lead riding his big, stout horse named Happy. We were about a mile out from Pipe when, all at once, his horse dropped out of sight. We had come to a deep wash that had drifted full of snow. We spent a considerable amount of time tromping through into the wash in order to get solid footing for the horse to climb up the steep bank of the wash and out on the level ground again.

Pipe Valley looked like a sea of white. The bushes were covered with snow and the washes had all drifted full. It was so cold that the scarves we had over our faces froze to our skin and the horses had icicles three or four inches long on their noses where their breath would freeze. The cattle had tried to find shelter under trees, in the larger wash banks, in rock out­croppings, or anywhere they could find some relief from the cold wind and deep snow.

Whenever we would ride into one of these bed grounds, there would be dead cattle and some too weak to stand. Some we were able to tail up (help them to stand), and then try to make a trail to a bush or some tumbleweed that hadn't been eaten into the ground. Some of the cattle we were able to drive to the red hill west of Pipe where there was some fresh browse and the snow didn't lay quite so deep.

Along toward the last of February or the first of March, the sun finally began to shine. The weather became warmer and the snow began to melt. After the snow had melted on the level ground, there was still some on the north slopes of the hills and the washes were still full, Fred, Carl, and I packed up a horse and spent a few days riding the range to assess the loss, etc. We found the cattle so weak that they would get stuck in the mud or were unable to climb up a wash bank after trying to get a drink in the washes where the snow was melting.

We rode up the Bullrush Wash area and around the Moonshine and Yellowstone Rim, finding many dead cattle. Some had frozen feet or tails and some of their ears were frozen off. We helped many cattle out of washes or mud-holes.

To this day, cattlemen and sheep men recall the experiences of that tragic "winter of the blue snow". There has not been another winter, before or since, to compare with this one.

- Owen H. Johnson

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