The Grave of Everett Ruess…Found?

By Christian Probasco, 4-27-09

	Photo of Ruess by Dorothea Lange

Those of us to who enjoy speculating on where the young Californian Everett Ruess may have disappeared to back in 1934 may have to find another hobby. According to articles in the Salt Lake Tribune and National Geographic Adventure an unmarked grave near Comb Ridge is the adventurer’s last resting place.

Ruess, who briefly lived in my hometown of Valparaiso, Indiana, vanished into the Utah wilderness south of Escalante when he was 20. In his brief life he had wandered (i.e. walked or hitchhiked) through much of the West and most of southern Utah, usually accompanied only by his burros. His thoughts and feelings on these journeys were recorded in letters to his brother Waldo and his journals .

Ruess was a budding block print artist. He was an associate of famous photographers Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange and the artist Maynard Dixon.

Search parties supposedly found Ruess’ starving burros in a makeshift corral in Davis Gulch, near the southern end of Hole-in-the-Rock Road, a famous pioneer trail, not far from what was then the Colorado River (today it’s Lake Powell).

The burial site is 60 miles east of Davis Gulch. Says the Tribune;

“Denny Bellson, a Najavo from Shiprock, N.M., embarked on a search for Ruess’ remains after his sister said their grandfather, Aneth Nez, told her about the murder of a young white man by three Ute Indians he witnessed from afar while walking the area in the 1930s. Nez told his granddaughter, Daisy Johnson, of how he then buried the young man after his attackers left him for dead and took his two burros.”

Bellson found a hastily dug grave in the area Johnson described. According to the Tribune article, DNA tests confirm the grave belongs to Ruess. The Adventure article says the jaw bone fragments closely match Ruess’ facial features.

The discovery raises a lot of questions. Did Ruess actually travel to Davis Gulch at all? Did searchers actually find his burros there, and if so, where did he get the burros he had at the time of his murder, as described by Nez? Exactly how did he get to Comb Ridge? 

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