Western BackCountry
Welcome to Western Back Country established to be an informative source for those who enjoy camping, hiking, exploration and appreciate the beauty and history of the west. This site was established by Red Rock Back Country Adventures to be an information source depicting images, maps and information about this country’s National Parks & Monuments, National Forests & Wilderness Areas, Ghost Towns & Anasazi Ruins as well as the State Parks and other protected landmarks in Southwestern Utah , Northern Arizona, South Eastern Nevada and the western states for further information on these destinations go HERE. Please return often as it is our intent to update this on a regular basis as we travel to new locations. Please note before heading out be prepared, please review the information provided HERE for tips on prepardness and historical information that will assist you in making your trip a safe and enjoyable one.
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Copyright: Most of the images depicted upon this site are copyrighted and not licensed for use without written permission from myself, historical images are copyrighted to their respective owners.
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Shauntie Ghost Town, UT
Shauntie was a boom town during the years 1872 to 1877 . There were over 40 houses of various types, several businesses including a hotel, several saloons, a post office, two stores and a smelter. When the mines gave out so did the town.
Shauntie was a mining town west of Milford flat, based in the foothills. The town burned down twice and when the mine was abandoned and people moved..
Early in 1870 prospectors, drifting east from the boom at Pioche, Nevada, and west from the spectacular strike at the Lincoln mine in the Mineral mountains near Minersville, found silver in paying quantities in the Picachio mountains across the valley from Minersville to the west. On July 8, 1870 the Star district was organized. The silver strikes attracted much excitement in both Utah, and Eastern Nevada. By early 1871 the area was so flooded with prospectors, and so many claims were being filed that the district was divided on Nov. 11, 1871 into two districts, the North Star, and the South Star. By 1880 over 1,600 claims had been staked; and the low mountains were swarming with prospectors and mining men. The mines were grouped in five or six different areas, or canyons, each with it’s own mining camp: North Camp or Shenandoah City to the North, Foothills to the East, South Camp to the South, Elephant City or Middle Camp in the middle of the range, and West Camp and Shauntie on the West side of the Mountains.
Because it was located at the only regularly running water in the area, Shauntie became the smelting center for the two districts. In 1873 the Shauntie smelter was built with two stacks. In 1874, this smelter was torn down and the larger Shumar Smelter was built, with one stack, but having a 20 ton per day capacity; and employing as many as a hundred workers hauling and smelting the ore being brought in from the Rebel, Elephant, Miner’s Dream, Burning Moscow, and other mines. During the years 1872 to 1877 Shauntie boomed. Soon Shauntie was vying with Shenandoah City as the leading town in the area. Shauntie had over 40 houses of various types, and several businesses including a hotel, several saloons, it’s own post office, and stores. In June of 1875 the smelter burned to the ground, but it was quickly rebuilt and pouring out even more bullion than before. In 1876 Shauntie, itself was destroyed by fire. This still didn’t stop Shauntie. The town was soon rebuilt and was attracting the attention of mining men from all over the west. The veins in the Star districts proved to be shallow however, and by 1877 many of them were closing as their veins pinched out. Just as depression set in and the miners and prospectors of Shauntie were wondering where to go next, News of new discovery excited the ears of the investors and miners. A fabulous new mine, the “Bonanza” had been discovered just 10 miles to the Northwest in the San Francisco Mountains. As fast as the camps of the Star districts were built, so they were abandoned. As news of the discovery reached the others in the district, they just picked up and left, flocking to the new mine which had just been re-named the “Horn Silver” hoping to find work, or profit at the new diggings. Shauntie and the other camps were left abandoned for thirty three years. In 1910 there was a small resurgence when the Burning Moscow, Cedar-Talisman, and Harrington-Hickory mines were re-opened to mine out the low grade ore that was left behind during the boom period. Shauntie again was the center of activity. The Post Office was changed to Moscow in honor of the Burning Moscow mine, then to Talisman, but the locals still just called it Shauntie. By 1920 the low grade ore was mined out, the few people that stayed to carry on small time mining moved to Milford leaving Shauntie and the other Star District camps deserted and crumbling. Over the years the townspeople and farmers around Milford dismantled and hauled off everything they could use from around the mines leaving just a few shacks and head frames at the mines. Foundations and broken glass scattered through the sagebrush and junipers area all that is left of what was once the thriving camp of Shauntie.
Dinosaur Tracksites and Fossil Trails in Utah
Blanding, UT – Anasazi Indian Ruins
Ancient Pueblo People, or Ancestral Puebloans is a preferred term for the cultural group of people often known as Anasazi who are the ancestors of the modern Pueblo peoples. The ancestral Puebloans were a prehistoric Native American civilization centered around the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States.
The civilization is perhaps best-known for the jacal, adobe and sandstone dwellings that they built along cliff walls, particularly during the Pueblo II and Pueblo III eras. An excellent location to appreciate the history of these people can be found at this un-named location of classic ruins
County roads leading to this location is partially gravel and sandstone, this drive may not be a good idea in wet weather. Although a 4WD is not necessary but opens up many possibilities for further exploration of the area.
GPS location: N 37° 32.396 W 109° 14.486
Natural Bridges National Monument – Dinosaur Petroglyph’s
South Camp 1800s Mining Ruins, UT
South Camp 1800s Mining Ruins – The remains of these rock cabins are some of the last vestiges of “South Camp”, one of the leading mining camps in the Star Range, which was active in the late 1800s. More than a hundred years ago this was a bustling town. With an active stagecoach line from Milford which led west through South Camp to Nevada. Homes, stores, and saloons once stood here. The mines in the area are are open yet dangerous, although some of them still hold priceless ore for those who are up for the adventure.
Location For Google Map Click Here
Locating Fossilized trilobites In Nevada
located in the Pioche Hills located in eastern Lincoln County, Nevada near the historic mining town of Pioche is a formation known which creates The Lower-Middle Cambrian boundary interval within the southern Great Basin and Mojave Desert region. Here in the long outcrop a belt occurs within a mountain chain which trends southward along the west side of the Bristol, Highland, Chief, and Burnt Springs Ranges to Lime Mountain in the Delamar Mountains. With in the shale of these ranges especially the Middle Cambrian Pioche Shale occurs which in the Pioche Hills located in eastern Lincoln County, Nevada. These areas are rich in fossilized trilobites within the prehistoric Cambrian shelf a transect would associated with depth changes across the shelf a prehistoric ocean.
Locating Fossils
The most efficient way to locate fossilized trilobites is to examine the shale formations both above and below the surface is to dig into the slabby-weathering siliceous shales, exposing fresh sedimentary strata below the surface. Fortunately, most of the shales within a few inches of the surface are severely fractured; hence, little splitting of them is necessary, since they tend to separate from the outcrops in thin sheet-like plates. Watch for the fossil compressions and impressions along the bedding planes of every shale fragment you remove from the hillside exposures. The deeper you dig, though, the more thickly bedded the opaline shales become, until at last it will become necessary to begin splitting the extremely dense, concrete-like rocks. When doing this, always remember to wear safety goggles, or at least some kind of eye protection such as sunglasses. The denser, thick-bedded opaline strata crack apart only with the greatest of applied brute force, thus increasing the likelihood that sharp fragments might launch off the matrix into your eyes. Stand slabs of shale on end, then give them a sure whack with the blunt end of a geology hammer. If you’re fortunate, the sedimentary layers will break apart along their original planes of deposition, revealing perfect carbonized leaf and seed impressions and compressions to their first light of day in approximately 16 million years.
Locating Fossilized Plants In Nevada
Perhaps the richest producer of Miocene-age (22-to-5-million-year-old) plants in the entire state of Nevada is a geologic rock deposit known as the Middlegate Formation. It is exposed primarily in the Middlegate Hills a number of miles from Fallon. In this area some 64 species of fossil plants have been described, including such diverse types as evergreen live oak, giant sequoia, willow, fir, maple and spruce. The fossil specimens, which consist of leaves, winged seeds (called samaras in technical botanical terminology), acorn cups, seed pods and branchlets, occur as pale to dark brown carbonized impressions on a cream-white to pale-brownish matrix of opaline shale–many of them exhibiting such an exceptional degree of preservation that the original delicate venation on the leaves is clearly visible.
All of the remains are Middle Miocene in geologic age, dated by radiometric methods at some 16 million years old. They occur in the uppermost (the youngest layers of deposition) 30 feet of the Middlegate Formation, just below the overlying Middle Miocene Monarch Mill Formation, whose basal sedimentary conglomerates have yielded to paleontologists a large vertebrate fauna, including the silicified bones of moles, rabbits, squirrels, beavers, mountain beavers, mice, weasels, martins, rhinocetotids, oreodonts, camels, llamas and pronghorns
Such scientifically invaluable fossil vertebrate material on Public Lands is of course off limits to all collectors who do not possess a special use permit issued by the Bureau of Land Management, a formal collecting status that is perhaps well understood by most amateurs and professional paleontologists alike. At present, there is no such legal restriction on the hobby gathering of leaves, winged seeds, and other paleobotanical remains at Middlegate–but that, too, could change.
The troubling circumstance is that commercial collecting interests have recently begun to concentrate on a select number of fossil leaf-yielding fields in Nevada–obviously those sites which happen to provide them with the greatest numbers of well-preserved specimens. This is patently illegal activity, since no fossil remains collected on Public Lands may be either sold or bartered. And while there is certainly nothing criminal about selling fossil specimens collected on private lands (with the land owner’s unambiguous permission, of course), any desecration of a fossil horizon on Public Lands in an attempt to secure as many saleable remains as possible is without question an offense punishable by law. Also, such behavior is with sure consequence horribly counterproductive, since it only invites officials with the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service to close down popular fossil areas, preventing conscientious amateurs from sampling places of significant paleontological interest.
Locating Fossils
The most efficient way to locate fossil plants in the Middlegate Hills is to dig into the slabby-weathering siliceous shales, exposing fresh sedimentary strata below the surface. Fortunately, most of the shales within a few inches of the surface are severely fractured; hence, little splitting of them is necessary, since they tend to separate from the outcrops in thin sheet-like plates. Watch for the fossil plant compressions and impressions along the bedding planes of every shale fragment you remove from the hillside exposures. The deeper you dig, though, the more thickly bedded the opaline shales become, until at last it will become necessary to begin splitting the extremely dense, concrete-like rocks. When doing this, always remember to wear safety goggles, or at least some kind of eye protection such as sunglasses. The denser, thick-bedded opaline strata crack apart only with the greatest of applied brute force, thus increasing the likelihood that sharp fragments might launch off the matrix into your eyes. Stand slabs of shale on end, then give them a sure whack with the blunt end of a geology hammer. If you’re fortunate, the sedimentary layers will break apart along their original planes of deposition, revealing perfect carbonized leaf and seed impressions and compressions to their first light of day in approximately 16 million years.
Nampaweap Petroglyphs, AZ
Strawberry Point. UT
Strawberry Point Drive out to the scenic view point of Strawberry Point for spectacular views of forested land and red rock formations. A high clearance vehicle makes this a nicer drive. Duck Pond is 9 miles from the turnoff to Strawberry Point. Strawberry Point is a mountain cliff in Iron County in the state of Utah (UT). Strawberry Point climbs to 8,373 feet (2,552.09 meters) above sea level. Strawberry Point is located at latitude – longitude coordinates (also called lat – long coordinates or GPS coordinates) of N 37.751088 and W -112.943001.
Anyone attempting to climb Strawberry Point and reach the summit should look for detailed information on the Strawberry Point area in the topographic map (topo map) and the Summit USGS quad. To hike and explore the Utah outdoors near Strawberry Point, check the list of nearby trails.
Read Condition Reports | Add Condition ReportView Locator Map and Local WeatherPeak Type: CliffLatitude: 37.751088Longitue: -112.943001Peak Elevation: 8,373 feet (2,552.09 m)Nearest City: Summit (3.2 miles away)
The Pa’rus Trail – Zion National Park, UT
The Pa'rus Trail - Zion National Park, UT
The Pa'rus Trail - Zion National Park, UT
The Pa'rus Trail - Zion National Park, UT
