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The Romantic and Notorious History of Brown's Park
by Diana Allen Kouris

Brown's Park, on the Green River lies partly in Utah and Colorado. It is astride the Old Outlaw Trail, which ran from Old Mexico and Arizona, through Wyoming, Montana, and into Alberta. Many outlaws passed through Brown's Park, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

From the time I was a little girl, happily growing up in the Old Charlie Crouse log house at our ranch in Brown's Park, I was very aware of the unique history surrounding me. I often drank from the icy spring where the outlaws had drank, near the cabin at the mouth of Crouse Canyon, where we once hid. When I was still so small that I had to find a boulder or a fence to climb on so I could get my foot in the saddle stirrup, I was entranced by the stories my mother told about the valley I cherished.

In the very kitchen where we ate our supper each night, outlaw Butch Cassidy had many times eaten his. In the same warm kitchen so many years ago, a young cowboy had be killed by a knife during a poker game. My sister, brother, and I sometimes visited his grave on the hill nearby. Although I listened with great interest to the stories about the valley, i listened and promptly forgot the details.  I left it to my mother to tuck them into a corner of her mind or write them in her journals for safe keeping. After I grew up, I still depended on her to take care of the history preserving, which she ardently worked to do. Then suddenly she was gone.

This is their story, and the story of the valley which held them so close.

Paperback, c1988, 314 p. : ill. ; 14 cm.
Includes Bibliographical References and index

$12.95