Remains Found Near Comb Ridge, Utah Not Those of Ruess

By Christian Probasco, 10-25-09

	Comb Ridge, Utah, lies 90 miles east of where Ruess was last seen alive.

A new DNA test on remains found in a makeshift grave near Comb Ridge has disproved the possibility they belong to a famous young wanderer who vanished in Southern Utah in the thirties, according to a story by Paul Foy of the Associated Press.

University of Colorado biologist Kenneth Krauter says he accepts the university’s second test of remains believed to be those of poet and artist Everett Ruess, and further tests by the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab in Rockville, Md, contradicting his organization’s original findings, as “final.”

Spokesmen for the university’s lab had called their original results “irrefutable.”

Ruess was only 20 at the time of his disappearance in Nov., 1934. By that time he had explored much of Sequoia, Yosemite and the High Sierras and the desert Southwest of Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado--often by burro or foot. He had also introduced himself to famous photographers Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange.

Sheepherders who camped with Ruess close to Davis Canyon, near the southern end of a pioneer trail known as “Hole-in-the-Rock Road” were probably the last to see him alive. The road, which is 90 miles west of where the remains were later found, used to end at the banks of the Colorado River but now terminates on the shores of Lake Powell.

Locals launched a huge search of the region at the behest of Ruess’ family.  His burros were supposedly found in a brush corral in Davis Gulch. The searchers also found footprints which seemed to match Ruess’. But the young man’s remains, and the pack and provisions he carried with him, were never recovered.

Books and a documentary on the romantic, who disappeared in what is one of the world’s most remote and forbidding wildernesses, have kept the myth alive over the decades. Hunting for Ruess’ bones became a common diversion for visitors to the area, though some became obsessed with the search. Some theorized he had purposely vanished to begin his life elsewhere and others believed he had died in an accident or been murdered, or had committed suicide.

The mystery seemed to have been solved earlier this year. Navajo Denny Bellson lead National Geographic Adventure writer David Roberts to a grave believed to be that of a white man murdered by Indians several decades earlier. Roberts’ and Bellson’s suspicions about the body were confirmed by the first DNA test and a facial analysis by Adventurer. Utah State Archaeologist Kevin Jones, however, remained skeptical.

“I’m not convinced that it’s him,” said Jones in a July Salt Lake Tribune article by Ben Fulton, “A lot of people threw aside their skepticism with the announcement of the DNA tests. They don’t realize that DNA is just another line of evidence and can yield mistakes as well.”

According to Jones, the skeleton’s jawbone resembled that of an Indian. And its teeth were also too worn to be Ruess’.

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