Best Time Keeper Waldo Wilcox
knew there was trouble the moment he saw the mauled(受伤的)deer carcass, not far
from one of the meadows where his cattle grazed. His dogs, Dink and Shortie,
sensed it too—mountain lion. He grabbed his pistol and a rope from his truck,
and said, "let’s get him". Then he headed up the mountainside, his hounds racing
far ahead. Wilcox moved in long strides up the rocky grade.
Still, it took some time before he topped the summit. The big cat was not 50
yards in front of him, its fangs(尖牙)bared, cornered by the dogs on a massive
sandstone bluff. Wilcox gripped his gun. He hoped to take the
mountain lion alive and sell it to a zoo. He’d done that before and made a tidy
profit. Wilcox took quick aim, his pistol cracked, and there was a sudden
silence as the animal fell limp to the ground. It wasn’t until
the red dust had settled and Wilcox’s pulse had slowed that he gazed around.
What he saw stunned him. High on the bluff lay an archeological(考古学的)treasure
trove(珍藏物)—large pieces of pottery, stone shelters that once housed whole
families, and domed structures that had held wild grains harvested centuries
before Europeans set foot in North America. Wilcox made his
discovery on the bluff almost 20 years ago—but it was not the first time he had
found relics on his land. Since 1951, when his father bought the high-valley
Range Creek ranch, a year had seldom passed in which Wilcox did not come upon
some spot of archeological interest. Occasionally he stumbled across burial
plots. Native American Culture For nearly half a
century, he kept quiet about the riches, telling hardly anyone outside his
immediate family what was hidden in the isolated valley 160 miles southeast of
Salt Lake City. When he discovered a new site, Wilcox would note its
location—then just let things be. Now the secret of Range Creek
is finally out. Four years ago, forced by time to give up ranching, Wilcox, 75,
sold his beef-cattle property in a deal that ultimately put the land in state
hands. Thanks to Wilcox’s silence, the 4 200-acre ranch is one huge, untouched
archeological site. Today, scientists from Utah’s Division of State History and
the University of Utah are busily cataloguing magnificent, previously unknown
ruins on the property. What the scientists are learning at Range
Creek has already begun to shed light on one of the greatest mysteries of Native
American history—the fate of the Fremont culture, which had thrived in Utah for
almost 1 000 years, then vanished virtually over-night in the 1300s.
The very existence of the Fremont did not come to light until the late
1920s, when a Harvard University expedition discovered evidence of an ancient
people who settled along the Fremont River in southern Utah. Farmers and
hunter-gatherers who arrived in the region at about A. D. 400, the Fremont lived
in one-room homes dug into the earth and finished off with stacked-stone walls
and roofs made of reeds and mud. Carbon dating of corncobs found on the Wilcox
ranch hinted that Range Creek was buzzing with activity from roughly A. D. 900
to 1100. But right around the beginning of the 14th century,
some great shift occurred. The drawings, pottery and structures particular to
the Fremont culture ceased to be made—anywhere. Some experts guess that other
peoples pushed Out the Fremont. Others speculate that some climatic event forced
the Fremont to move south, where they may have integrated with other
tribes. A Living Monument "In terms of history and
archeological study, Range Creek is essential to the state," explains former
governor Olene S. Walker. "It gives us a view into a period for which we have no
written history." She is speaking primarily about the Fremont culture, but A
World That Time Forgot. Even today, the valley resembles a world that time
forgot. When Wilcox was 11, visiting Range Creek with his dad,
he and a friend guided their horses up the valley, and began exploring the rocky
hillsides. When he discovered a man-made dome of stone and clay, he wasn’t
entirely sure what it was. Decades later, probably alerted by a
hunter whom Wilcox had allowed on his land, a university archeologist contacted
Wilcox, asking if researchers could take a look at the ruins he heard were
plentiful in the valley. Wilcox was wary but allowed the group onto his
property, leading them to a stone wall. "Then one of them gets out a pick," he
recalls, "and raises his arm like he’s about to chip off a piece of the rock. I
grabbed that pick out of his hand, showed the fellows to the gate, locked it
behind them and said goodbye. I still got that pick somewhere."
Even as he approached 70, Wilcox continued to run cattle, tending to his
herd on horseback. Finally, his aching body, as well as his worried wife and
four grown children, told him it was time to retire. "I hated
the idea of leaving, but there comes a time when you have to give it up," says
Wilcox, a muscular six-footer who now lives in Green River, three hours by car
from Range Creek. He accepted $ 2.5 million from the nonprofit Trust for Public
Land, a national conservation group, in a deal that ultimately deeded the
property to the state—which, he hoped, was more likely than an individual to
preserve the ruins. Sadly, southeast Utah is riddled with sites
that have been looted. While Wilcox presided over the valley, Wilcox lived
contentedly among the undisturbed remains of an ancient civilization. Today, hc
sometimes laments having sold the ranch, in part because even tiny Green River
feels crowded to him, but mostly because back in the hills he had a sacred kind
of calling: to protect his land and its relics. It wasn’t easy keeping them
secret all those years, but it was well worth it. "If I had to
do it all over again," he contends, "I’d do the same. " Also
about Wilcox, who is a kind of living monument to America’s pioneer era. He
spent decades in a valley practically cut off from the rest of civilization.
He’s not a worldly man, nor a man of many words. Living as he did, surrounded by
soaring mountains, he rarely had visitors and never owned a television or
subscribed to a newspaper. Because his wife moved with their children to the
nearest town during school months, he spent much of each winter alone, leaving
the valley only a few times each year for provisions. Still, it
was hard for Wilcox to give up the land he loved so much. He is even slightly
suspicious of the archeologists now scouring his property, referring to them as
"those college fellows with their degrees". He possesses the kind of wisdom and
humor that can be nurtured only by years of herding cattle over an 8500foot
pass, sinking a well to draw water from—to carve a living out of a
wilderness. Wilcox has been on a first-name basis with nature
all his life. Both his grandfathers had migrated west in the 1800s, one working
on the railroad, the other raising cattle. His father, Ray Budge Wilcox, owned a
ranch southeast of Range Creek and taught his two sons how to ride, shoot and
drive cattle almost as soon as they could walk. Waldo was about
20 when Budge told him that Range Creek was for sale and he was thinking of
buying it. He’d put up the money but invited his boys to sign on as partners.
Waldo was delighted. "It’s some of the prettiest land you’ve ever seen," he
claims. Finally Wilcox’s property was deeded to the state, which was more possibly than an individual to preserve ______ .