Two Lane Adventures: Day 89 of 117 on our “Go West, Young Man” Two Lane Adventure

Charlie and I needed a few things, so we jumped on I-70 and headed east to Rifle, since there are not many choices in Parachute.

On the way back, we took the “old road” so Charlie could see if he could see the Anvil Points mine he used to work at. On our walk last night, Linda pointed out the light, a tiny speck from a dusk-to-dawn light way up on the face of the Book Cliffs, the opening to the massive Anvil Points mine. We were able to locate it, but he kept saying, he wished he had his binoculars.

Well, it was only about 5 miles to the house … so we took the groceries to the house and grabbed his binoculars and went back. He could see it well, with his binoculars. They used to meet at the bottom and take a big van up to the mine. He followed that road up, what we thought was a big boulder in the road, was a slide off to the side of the road. At the top, near the mine entrance, there used to be a building that they used for their breaks, lunch and meetings. He could not locate that building, so it must be gone.

Do you want to know the history … well I do! The Ute tribes of the area were well aware of the "burning rock," it didn't take long before the earliest European settlers discovered its properties. Local legend has it that one man built his cabin west of Rifle and used the abundant black shale rock to construct the fireplace. Upon lighting the first fire the house burned down. Oil had been produced from shale for a number of years in other countries, but America was going through its first great oil drilling boom in the late 1800s and early 1900s when scant attention was paid to the burning rock. It wasn't until the dawn of World War I and the US Navy's conversion from coal to oil-fueled ships that it became a national interest to obtain a secure supply of oil. President Woodrow Wilson took 46,000 acres from two sites in Colorado and 87,000 acres in Utah, designating the land as the naval oil shale reserve in 1916. This triggered the area's first boom with a speculators grabbing up all unsecured shale-bearing properties. With no technology to convert the shale to oil, the speculators soon lost interest and left. Realizing its mistake, Congress passed the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920. By 1922, 100 companies had formed to experiment with oil shale, but none came up with an economic way to extract the oil. By the Great Depression, they were gone.

In 1925 the Federal Bureau of Mines opened up an experimental mine and processing facility between Parachute and Rifle on naval oil shale reserve land at Anvil Points. This adventure was short lived and closed the summer of 1929. Interest in oil shale stayed dormant until 1944. The Bureau of Mines reactivated the Anvil Points experimental station in 1945. This time the money flowed into the project with an initial investment of $6 million. They built a 5½ miles of switchback road rising over 2,000 feet up the Book Cliffs to the mine. Ending at the 73-foot-thick mahogany ledge, the richest part of the shale cliffs. High up the Roan Plateau, once the road to the mine was completed, heavy equipment and technology of the time was employed. The mine itself became a set of huge caverns. The caverns grew from 50 feet wide and 100 feet long to 80 feet wide and 200 feet. This is where Charlie came in, not in 1945 … but in the early 1970’s. He worked inside the mine, in these huge caverns! Even though the Anvil Points oil shale project, showed success, the government project failed to attract any commercial interest. In 1956 Congress suspended funding for the facility. The mine and facilities were then mothballed until the early 1970’s when the Arab oil embargo once again prompted the government to pump money into the project.

All that remains of the four gaping mine portals large enough that big trucks once drove through them have been closed off to all but bats. The portals tapped mines that were sometimes 1,000 feet long or more, employed hundreds of miners at their peak and provided 400,000 cubic yards of oil shale that underwent retort heating processes at the research site. The site ended up in the hands of the Department of Energy, which completed decommissioning of it and demolition of buildings in 1986, following the oil shale bust a few years earlier. Congress transferred the research site and the oil shale reserves to the Bureau of Land Management in 1997, who was tasked with clean-up of the site. Most clean-up was completed by 2012. All that remains is the three reseeded mounds with signs indicating that they’re repositories for oil shale waste.

Don and Linda are Bronco fans, so we watched the game. It was a good game and the Broncos won! Since Don and Linda have cooked for us for the last few days, it was our turn to return the favor. SO, my specialty … lasagna. We eat early, so it could settle before we all went to bed early … as Don has to get up at 4 am. I made a regular lasagna and a zucchini lasagna. Both were delicious and I was able to leave Don and Linda some left overs … especially, since Don mentioned he could not remember the last time he had lasagna!

Later in the afternoon, we enjoyed the free entertainment that the dogs, deer and turkeys provided.

The dogs were inside, but the deer and turkey shared the front yard! Talk about living with wildlife … they sure do!

There was one fawn, that did not like the windmill, he or she kept looking at it and would not go any further … finally he or she turned and went back closer to our friends camper.

Oil and gas is the number one industry in the state of Colorado. That is who our friends work for, Williams. Williams’ interstate gas pipeline and gathering & processing operations span the US. Including assets in the Gulf of Mexico, the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest and the Eastern Seaboard. The Northwest Pipeline system has changed significantly since its beginnings nearly 60 years ago. Like the Western states it serves, Northwest’s transmission system has expanded to meet the demands of growth. Today the pipeline is a primary artery for the transmission of natural gas to the Pacific Northwest. What began as a 1,500-mile pipeline is now a 4,000-mile bi-directional transmission system crossing five states.

turkeys in the foreground, deer in the middle

Linda and I took our last walk of this trip up the hill called County Road 310. Since the free-range cattle had moved further away, we were treated to lots of deer and a few turkeys.