In The Path Of Energy Boom

Adobe Town Is A Special Place

By Brodie Farquhar, 11-14-06

	Click here to see a photo gallery of Adobe Town courtesy the Biodiverity Conservation Alliance.

A blue-green alliance of labor and conservationists seeks protection for the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area.

Meanwhile, here's my take of a visit to the site last year:

I’m in the middle of nowhere.

That’s my first thought as I bounce down Bitter Creek Road, somewhere between Wamsutter and Rock Springs.
My guide is Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie.

On all sides are newly scrapped roads, drilling rigs, storage tanks, raw-looking pipeline trenches and energy company pickups kicking up rooster-tails of red dust into a bright-blue sky. Molvar and other conservation groups fear that Wyoming’s energy boom will roll right over some of the most spectacular scenery and rare ecosystems in the West – the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area.

They’ve petitioned to enlarge the study area to over 180,000 acres – to include additional lands of wilderness quality in The Haystacks, along Willow Creek and the Willow Creek Rim, and south of the study area to the Powder Rim and just beyond.

The conservation groups have fought in the courtroom to block a seismic survey across some of the most sensitive lands. Biodiversity was allied with the Wyoming Wilderness Association, the Colorado Environmental Coalition, Center of Native Ecosystems and the Wilderness Society.

As we head further south, signs of Wyoming’s energy boom gradually diminish. With the exception of the hardy souls living at the Eversole Ranch, there’s no people out here, save for over 1,000 wild horses, one of the biggest migratory herds of antelope in the world and sundry sightings of raptors, pygmy rabbits and coyotes.

At 7,000 feet in elevation, and receiving less than six inches of precipitation per year, the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area is classified as cold desert. That means it can reach into the high 90s in the summer, or 30-below in the winter. Shade or shelter from the searching and ever-present wind are rare to nonexistent.

Sagebrush range and saltbush dominates the low, broad valleys and plains, while juniper dots the low hills. On rare occasions, usually downstream from a hidden seep, are small stands of ancient cottonwoods.

After a seemingly endless drive, we turn off the main four-wheel track onto an even more primitive and rocky trail. The horizon, once filled with endless vistas of sagebrush, drops down and away to distant battlements of wind-worn rock. Below is a grand vista of rocky pillars, ravines, towers and walls.

Here’s what an early explorer said about Adobe Town: “This escarpment is the most remarkable example of the so-called bad-land erosion within the limits of the Fortieth Parallel Exploration...Along the walls of these ravines the same picturesque architectural forms occur, so that a view of the whole front of the escarpment, with its salient and reentrant angles, reminds one of the ruins of a fortified city. Enormous masses project from the main wall, the stratification-lines of creamy, gray, and green sands and marls are traced across their nearly vertical fronts like courses of immense masonry, and every face is scored by innumerable narrow, sharp cuts, which are worn into the soft material from top to bottom of the cliff, offering narrow galleries which give access for a considerable distance into this labyrinth of natural fortresses. At a little distance, these sharp incisions seem like the spaces between
series of pillars, and the whole aspect of the region is that of a line of Egyptian structures.”
--1869, General A.A. Humphreys, leader of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel.

A long-time fan of Tolkien’s “The Ring” fantasy, my imagination sees a fantastical jumble of fortifications for Mordor’s Orcs, where Frodo and Sam skulk amid the ruins. What’s really out there, I soon discover on a hike, are the tracks of rabbit and coyote in the fine-grained silt that erodes from the surrounding formations.

Then there are those towering spires with great boulders sitting atop. They make great nests for the resident hawks and eagles, but also great puzzles: How did that happen?

The geologic reason is that wind, water and time wore away surrounding rocks, leaving a reddish cap rock perched atop the tower. The imagination, however, knows that whimiscal giants have been a play here.

My imagination soon has more fodder to chew on -- the surrounding bedrock of compressed volcanic ash, washed down from Yellowstone’s Supervolcano days – is a wonderously rich dig site for paleontologists and was a great hideout for outlaw Butch Cassidy and his gang.

Paleontologists have found the remains of ancient horses, camels, woolly rhinoceroses and giant sloths, while archeologists have found ancient campsites of prehistoric peoples.

Northeast of the Adobe Town Rim are the Haystacks, where, according to local tradition, Butch Cassidy and his gang hid their fresh horses, which helped them get away from pursuers, following the Tipton train robbery.
Hide horses? Heck, you could hide an army in these badland formations.

But I don’t think you could hide energy development, not based on what I saw to the north, up toward I-80. There, the signs of energy development are pervasive, and there’s more to come. The Bureau of Land Management is looking at what it calls the “Desolation Flats Project Area,” which could be permitted for 385 conventional gas wells, not to mention construction of 542 miles of roads and 361 miles of pipeline across a quarter million acres of public land in the southern Red Desert of Wyoming, that accompany energy development.

But standing on the Adobe Town rim, there’s no sign of energy development -- yet -- just a red-tail hawk soaring on a thermal, looking for lunch amid spires and battlements.

Hmmm. Maybe I’m not in the middle of nowhere, but in the middle of a very special somewhere.

Directions
From Rawlins, drive west on Interstate 80 to Exit 142 – the Bitter Creek exit. Take the exit and drive south on County 19. After seven miles, you’ll cross railroad tracks. Twenty miles further is the Eversole Ranch. Drive through and take the left fork. Continue 1.8 miles to another fork – take the unmarked BLM road, but not County 19. Take the unmarked road for 3.4 miles and turn left onto a gravel road, and go east for 2.5 miles to the Adobe Town Rim. Four-wheel-drive vehicles only. Take plenty of water and be prepared for emergencies.

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