The Mystery of Everett Ruess

by W. L. Rusho

  My theory is that he wanted to re-unite with a Navajo sweetheart and that he joined with some Navajos who were trading in Escalante. They went down Davis Gulch to the Escalante River, followed it to the Colorado, where they crossed, maybe having to swim a little. The river was very low at the time.

  One of the Navajos was the father of the sweetheart that Everett wanted to find, but the father killed Everett to prevent him from meeting her. They then threw Everett’s body into the river. The Navajos did not want the burros so they released them. The burros then re-crossed the Colorado, made their way back up Davis Gulch to their home pasture. There is only one trail into and out of upper Davis Gulch and it was blocked by a fence. So the burros were still there when they were found later.[51]

  Alvey’s theory would work even if the burros did not get across the rivers into Navajo Tribal lands, as burros are reported to be very reluctant to cross even shallow streams of water, which the Colorado and San Juan rivers were in late 1934. Yet the predominant theory in the town of Escalante has always been that Everett witnessed a nearby rustling of a cow or calf and that the local outlaw rustlers killed Everett to silence him. (See “Clues and Frustrations” Chapter of this book).

  In the more recent history of the Ruess search, the site called Hole in the Rock plays an important role. In an earlier Chapter, this prominent site was mentioned as a destination Everett was heading toward when he left Escalante in November 1934, and the site and the Mormon route toward the southeast figured significantly in the later search for Everett’s bones.

  Hole in the Rock is a great notch in the north (right) wall of Glen Canyon a few miles above the mouth of the San Juan River and only about a mile below the mouth of the Escalante River. The site figured prominently in 1879 and 1880, when 283 Mormon pioneers, directed by Brigham Young, made their way to settle a new village in southeastern Utah. Deterred by long prospective roundabout terrain through Arizona and possibly among hostile Navajos, these Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faithful sought a shortcut that would enable them to reach their destination before the onslaught of winter. So they proceeded south, passing through the future location of Escalante, toward this cleft in the cliffs that offered a feasible, though extremely difficult, descent to the Colorado River.

  Hole in the Rock, Glen Canyon before Lake Powell. Photo by W. L. Rusho, 1962.

  December 1879 caught these rugged pioneers peering into Hole in the Rock, wondering how they would get their wagons, horses, families, and possessions down this steep notch, especially near the top, which was closed in by narrow walls of redrock Navajo sandstone. Behind them, winter snows had closed the passes, so they resolved to push onward and downward, whatever the cost in labor and material. Fortunately, they had dynamite, but it still took six weeks to widen the notch and to provide a “road,” almost impossibly steep, to the river. At one point they had to route the road across the face of a barren cliff, accomplished by cutting a square notch for the inside wagon wheels, then, below the notch, drilling holes for trees and branches that would support the outside wheels.

  Somehow, unbelievably, these Mormons actually drove their horses down Hole in the Rock on January 30, 1880, with the back wheels chain locked and with men behind holding ropes to slow the descent. For this epic achievement, the Hole in the Rock Expedition has taken its name.

  After crossing the Colorado River on a homemade ferry, the Mormons’ route to southeast Utah was by no means easy. For about ninety winding, canyon-gullied, slickrock miles they plowed their way southeast, building dugways, sinking in sand, moving slowly forward, sideward, upward and downward toward their distant goal.

  As they neared the San Juan River, the Mormons came up against Comb Ridge, a 900-foot high escarpment running north to south, directly athwart their travel. In a peculiar feat of topography, the San Juan has cut straight through the high ridge, while south of the river, Comb Ridge, on the Navajo Reservation, continues southward, slowly lowering in height. Comb Ridge was to figure prominently in the 2008–09 search for Everett.

  Remaining north of the river, this last lofty obstacle was almost too much for the Hole in the Rock pioneers of 1880, but having no choice, they built a long, winding dugway up Comb Ridge and ascended with their horses and wagons, only to face more hard rock gullies to the east. After finally reaching the San Juan River, their horses exhausted, their wagons falling apart, provisions almost gone, they called it quits. Thus after a six-month ordeal, on the riverbank they established the town of Bluff, Utah.

  Everett had probably heard about the grueling Hole in the Rock trek, since it was a prevailing story in Escalante’s history. He also must have heard about the scenic and dramatic cleft in Glen Canyon, apparently his destination when he and his burros left Escalante in November 1934. Ruess must have reached his goal, for Chester Lay, of Escalante, said that he and other searchers, on a preliminary, informal search, saw Everett’s footprints near the canyon rim at Hole in the Rock in November 1934.[52]

  Sixty-three years after the 1935 search was called off, author David Roberts appeared in Escalante on a quest to solve the mystery of Everett’s disappearance. Roberts, a fine, capable writer specializing in nature and outdoor adventure stories and books, became intrigued with the Everett Ruess account, and had received an assignment from National Geographic Adventure, a new magazine planning for its first issue. Roberts and I had a long discussion in Salt Lake City prior to his departure for southern Utah. I gave him all the background that I had, including information I gained from citizens in Escalante in 1982.

  Roberts apparently interviewed all those he could find in Escalante who had any knowledge of Everett, or who had theories about the 1934 disappearance. According to the National Geographic Adventure issue that came out in May 1999, Roberts bought into the prevailing suggestion in the town that rustlers had killed Everett. At Hole in the Rock, Roberts searched for clues, and during his hike along the canyon rim near Hole in the Rock found what looked like a grave, where some rustler, or rustlers, might have buried a body. He described a slight mound of rocks and earth about the right size, and nearby a few tin cans and weathered boards. But Roberts, in his article, said he remembered an ethic about not disturbing ruins, and so he turned around and departed. As he wrote:

  Addled with the heat, I knelt and seized the topmost stone. But just as I started to loose and dig through the dirt below, something stopped me. What first gave me pause was an ethic—never disturb a ruin—that decades of Southwest travel to hundreds of Anasazi sites has made almost second nature. But as I stood over the mound and wiped my hands on my shorts, as if to rub away the itch that had tempted them to seize the uppermost stone, I realized that it wasn’t really the pile of bones that I most wanted to leave undisturbed—it was the mystery of Everett Ruess.

  For Roberts, it was a poetic, perhaps even romantic, way to conclude his article.

  Days after the magazine story appeared, the sheriff of Garfield County was reported to be considering a search of the supposed grave, as was the National Park Service, on whose land the site lay. But these searches never occurred.

  Since I have never believed the “rustler killed him” theory, I thoroughly discounted the reported grave. I thereupon organized a private search. In late May of 1999, with my wife, Carole, my grandson, Nate, and friend Don Cecala, we boated down Lake Powell to the Hole in the Rock rimrock area, climbed the 700-foot-high steep sandstone redrock, and easily found the tin cans, boards and the so-called grave.

  The “grave” was indeed about six feet long, but there were no stones topping it. It was simply a mound of sand. Using a camper’s-type entrenching tool, Nate quickly dug downward, taking only about fifteen minutes to reach the bottom—solid sandstone bedrock, certainly not a grave. I advised Roberts of our digging expedition and its findings, but he did not reply.

  In the latter part of the twentieth century, other clues came to light that might shed some light on Everett’s disappearance.

  Everett’s di
ary from 1933 indicates that he was not in ideal health. One diary entry stated that he was suffering from pernicious anemia. Exactly what doctors knew about pernicious anemia in the early 1930s was minimal, and perhaps Everett was hit by some other malady. But if it was pernicious anemia, we know from a 1948 study that it is caused by a vitamin B-12 deficiency and that if untreated by periodic injections with the vitamin, it leads to death. Even the onset of the anemia causes extreme sensitivity to temperature swings. The iciness of winter in Davis Gulch must have caused Everett great suffering.

  Also, from his letters, one can sense that Everett suffered from a bipolar disorder, where he sometimes gloried in enormous bouts of happiness but occasionally slipped into periods of profound gloom and thoughts of death. And his pernicious anemia could only have deepened his periods of depression.

  His anemia and bipolar swings could suggest the possibilities either of suicide or of at least reckless abandon while climbing. Could Everett have been killed by a fall into a deep rocky crevice? If so, his body was not found by the searchers in 1935. But these searchers were generally on horseback and could not investigate the several almost vertical, deep, narrow slot canyons in upper Davis Gulch.

  Writer Scott Thybony reported in his 1997 book Burntwater that bones had indeed been found. He writes:

  Evidence surfaced in the mid-1970s to support the theory of a climbing accident. An unidentified Californian was motoring across Lake Powell when he waved down a Park Service boat. He handed the Ranger, Roe Barney, a sack of bones and told him he had just returned from Davis Gulch where he had been looking for Indian ruins. Near the rim of the canyon he spotted a skeleton wedged deep within a crack in the rock. He roped down to it and found signs of a broken hip and collar bone. Leaving most of the bones in place, he removed a few bones for identification. The ranger, who grew up in Escalante, immediately suspected they might be the bones of Everett Ruess. When he returned to park headquarters he handed over the human bones to a supervisor. Unfortunately, the bones disappeared. Rangers have since searched their holdings and records without finding either the bones or information to where they were found.[53]

  In an e-mail to me dated 13 January 2010, Scott Thybony said that he interviewed the late former ranger Roe Barney on 9 April 1991. Thybony writes:

  [Barney] told me the man who turned over the bones to him was from California, and had a wife and two daughters with him. Roe gave me the man’s description of where he found the skeleton in Davis and his roping down to it. The Californian removed “some of the bones” and put them in a sack, which he later turned over to Roe after flagging down his NPS boat on the lake. The man told Roe the shoulder and hip were broken, and it appeared to him to be a female or small male. Right away Roe thought it might be Ruess, since he’d heard those stories growing up in Escalante. Roe said the man didn’t have the skull and had left the rest where he’d found them. Roe took them to “headquarters.”[54]

  In May 2009, I learned that David Roberts was again on the trail of Everett Ruess. In the tenth anniversary edition of National Geographic Adventure magazine appeared a new article by Roberts entitled “The Mystery of Everett Ruess Solved.”

  As usual with Roberts, the article was well written and convincing. He related the story of an old Navajo man, Aneth Nez, who was stricken with cancer, which he believed was caused by touching a white man’s dead body back in the 1930s. As he finally told his granddaughter Daisey Johnson decades later, Nez had witnessed a young white man with two mules walking up Chinle Wash, just below the 300-foot-high Comb Ridge, when this man was rushed by two Ute Indians, who killed him with a blow on the head, took the mules and equipment and left the body lying in the stream bed. Out of compassion or whatever motivation, Nez said he decided to give the body a proper burial, which, in Navajo tradition, was by placing it in a remote rock crevice. So Nez lifted the body on his horse and carried it up Comb Ridge and laid it carefully in a shadowed sandstone cleft.

  Thirty-seven years later, now getting old, Aneth Nez contracted cancer, which he believed was caused by touching a dead body and not going through a Navajo curing ceremony. At this point he told his granddaughter Daisey Johnson that he needed to clip a lock of hair from the body to use in a planned ceremony. Daisey drove him to Comb Ridge, where she waited for him to climb down and back to retrieve the lock of hair. Nez’s subsequent Navajo “sing” was performed, and he lived another ten years.

  Daisey herself kept quiet about this episode for another thirty years, until she, too, contracted cancer. She could only believe that aiding her grandfather to visit the grave—no matter how long ago—had caused the disease. Wanting to help the deceased’s family to have closure, she asked her brother, Dennis Bellison, to search for the white man’s grave in Comb Ridge.

  After a number of days searching rock niches in Comb Ridge (apparently a number of Navajo graves lay there), Dennis declared that he had found what appeared to be a non-Navajo grave. He said he touched nothing, but he informed the local FBI office, since that agency has jurisdiction over non-Indian graves in Indian territories. The FBI, although doubting that it was that of a white man, visited the grave along with the sheriff of San Juan County. They disturbed the bones, broke up the skull, picked through the belongings, and departed, declaring it to be a Navajo grave.

  Bellison also informed his friend, Vaughn Hadenfeldt, a wilderness guide in Bluff, Utah, about the bones. And it was through Hadenfeldt that his friend, writer David Roberts, again entered the Ruess controversy. Roberts immediately planned to do a thorough job of identification, using experts in archaeology and forensics.

  First he called Ron Maldonado, Navajo Nation’s Chief Archaeologist, who agreed to meet Roberts, along with Bellison and Hadenfeldt, to examine the Comb Ridge grave. At the site, Maldonado declared that it did not look like a Navajo grave and advised obtaining a DNA examination to see if the bones were related to Everett’s two nieces and two nephews. Through a friend of Roberts and Roberts’ own persistence, University of Colorado anthropologist Dennis Van Gerven agreed to visit the Comb Ridge site.

  Working slowly and carefully, Maldonado and Van Gerven removed the bones and artifacts, wrapped and packed them, and Van Gerven transported them back to his Boulder, Colorado, laboratory for analysis. This was to set in motion their profound scientific mistake, just then, at the inception.

  In his effort to make a facial comparison with 1933 Dorothea Lange photos of Everett, Van Gerven carefully pieced together the broken face bones and teeth taken from the grave. The result, Van Gerven declared, was an absolute certainty that these were the bones of Everett Ruess.

  To clinch the certainty, the bones were moved to the laboratory of one of Van Gerven’s fellow scientists at the University of Colorado, microbiologist Ken Krauter, who would supervise the DNA matching. Comparing saliva DNA from Everett’s four nieces and nephews, Krauter and his associates were looking for a 25 percent match, as a positive result would require to match with an uncle. Krauter said later that he and his staff performed two separate tests on the bones, did everything they could to prevent possible contamination, and came up with the final result: POSITIVE! The bones were Everett’s!

  When the University of Colorado press release was issued, I was shocked, along with many other longtime students of the Everett Ruess phenomena. Was it really possible that Everett had secretly decided to leave Davis Gulch, using two mules for transport (he had left his burros behind), equipping himself for provisions for a long journey, then making his way through about 90 miles of winding canyon country to Comb Ridge—and with no letter advising his parents or brother? He could not have not gone through the Navajo Nation, I feel, since his conspicuous presence there would have been common knowledge. So his only route would have to have been along the old 1880 Hole in the Rock trail, traversing one of the most tortuous, lonely, and difficult regions in the United States.

  Non-forensic specialists like myself have been led to believe that DNA does not lie. If I had to accept th
at the Comb Ridge bones were those of Everett, I could only wonder, with half-concealed anger, why Everett would have done such an uncharacteristically purposeful disappearing act. I would have to look back at some of Everett’s letters, where he said he wanted to disappear, or die in the most remote spot he could find. Although it still never made much sense, I could reason that perhaps Everett actually had reason to disappear.

  From the evidence, Everett spent some time, perhaps several months, camping in Davis Gulch and hiking through the complex canyon group. But winter in these deep gulches tends to be cold; little sun ever reaches the canyon floors; in the small creek water freezes over in still pools. In spite of its idyllic scenery, it was certainly not a lovely place to spend the winter.

  In his letters, he had mentioned, “when I die I will leave no trace,” or “I wish to disappear.” Would this have indicated a definite plan to leave Davis Gulch and to “disappear,” as he phrased it, in the wild canyons of the Colorado Plateau?

  Even though I could rationalize Everett’s death at Comb Ridge, I was never comfortable with accepting it as reality. From my many years of reading and re-reading Everett’s letters and poems, I felt as though I had actually known him, and a deliberate secret, well-managed journey to southeast Utah did not harmonize with his character.

  At a 22 June 2009 symposium at the University of Utah, speakers were David Roberts, Vaughn Hadenfeldt, Dennis Bellison, Brian Ruess (Everett’s nephew), Michèle Ruess (Everett’s niece) and me. Projected on a large screen were Greg Child’s photographs taken at the grave that showed not only bones but several anomalous items of interest, including many beads, a button made from a dime, dated 1912, and above all, the mandible with worn, twisted teeth. I thought at the time that these anomalies didn’t suggest a young white male from Los Angeles.