Ute gathers rain clouds in his pockets

Photo near the old plywood plant with "The Ute" in the background. 

 Or maybe, wakes and drives out newcomers

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Every trip to Cortez -- which was at least a couple of times a week-- required a glance out the car window toward the Plywood Plant, with its smoking waste burner silo, and rounded long buildings in relief in front of the Sleeping Ute. 

Often, the log trucks with barreling 'Jake Brakes' and rough-sawn tree logs on trailers behind re-built tractors, could be seen making the turn-in. My childhood friends' fathers (or mothers) might be driving, or helped cut the logs, or skidded them out of the forest to be loaded in the trucks.

From 1965, to 1975, the Montezuma Plywood Plant, located near Dolores, produced all of Colorado's softwood plywood production. That plant was the only facility in the state recorded making plywood, at the time, according to The Softwood Plywood Industry in the United States, 1965-82, USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin, FPL 13, by David B. McKeever and Gary W. Meyer. 

"Consumption rose rapidly between 1965 and 1978 in the United States by major end users, with the exception of the recession years of 1974-75, End use plywood percent rose at a rate averaging 3.5 percent per year. One reason for this consumption rapid increase is the substitution of plywood for other lumber (particularly sheathing-grade plywood) in a variety of (3/8-in. basis) in construction applications. These include sheathing and subflooring in residential construction and concrete New residential construction formwork in nonresidential construction, wrote McKeever and Meyer. 

" ... Sleeping Ute Mountain, a humanlike reclining figure with arms folded accross his chest, guards the ancient ruins that make McElmo Canyon one of America's greatest archaeological treasures. The Utes, like the Anasazi before them, depended on this mountain near Cortez in southwestern  Colorado to protect them from invaders. Alas, for the Utes, this giant went to sleep just a few miles west of Towaoc, allowing the Spaniards to enter Colorado. Subsequently, Plains Indians and pale faced prospectors also encroached upon Ute domain. But according to the Ute legend, the Sleeping Ute will someday wake up -- and drive away all non-Utes. Another legend contends the Sleeping Ute grew angry with the Utes and gathered all the rain clouds into his pockets. Then he lay down on his back, folded his arms across his chest, and went to sleep. When the clouds finally do descend from Sleeping Ute Mountain, the Utes say they are slipping out of his pockets," writes Dr. Colorado Thomas J. Noel.

 "The Utes -- a mountain tribe that has resided her for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years -- have lived in Colorado longer than any other group. They are physically shorter, darker, and stockier than the Plains Indians and also differ from the Plains tribes in that they belong to the Shoshonean linguistic family centered in Utah and the Great Basin. They have descended from such prehistoric cultures as the Fremont people who occupied Colorado 10,000 years ago. Seven different Ute bands -- the Capote, Grand River, Mouache, Umcompagre, Uintah, Yampa, and Weminuche -- occupied central and western Colorado and eastern Utah," Noel writes.