'Treasure' ex-owner a thorn in state's side

GREEN RIVER — Seventy-six-year-old Waldo Wilcox is the celebrity curmudgeon of eastern Utah — a man who sold his remote 4,200-acre spread to the state in 2001 for $2.5 million and revealed to the world a treasure trove of hundreds of largely undisturbed ancient Indian sites.

But the outspoken rancher has become something of a nuisance to the new stewards, as he freely expresses his concerns over their management, vandalism by others, artifact removal, dusty roads and dried-out fields.

"They was always bragging about their educations," Wilcox says. "But I was always having to straighten them out."

To keep Wilcox away from his former ranch, the state has locked the big metal gates on the Range Creek Canyon cattle ranch that he ran for 50 years.

"If they don't want me there, it's their right," Wilcox says of state officials and archaeologists. "They bought it. When I owned it, I changed the locks to keep people out, too."

When the state acquired Range Creek, its pit houses and abundant artifacts of the Fremont civilization made archaeologists and wildlife managers giddy. The ranch is also prime hunting grounds for bighorn sheep, elk and mountain lions.

The state archaeologist, Kevin Jones, gushed that he felt like "the luckiest archaeologist alive. It is a phenomenal research opportunity," he said. "It's a national treasure."

But Wilcox thought the artifacts would stay in their canyon home. Many now reside in the Utah Museum of Natural History. And some things have just disappeared, he said.

Archaeologist Jerry Spangler, working with the University of Utah research team, is studying vandalism in the canyon. He said that since the land transfer, there have been two documented cases of missing artifacts and two of ground disturbance — one a full-blown looter's hole in the middle of a pit house.

The objects removed by the state — a tiny percentage of those found — were either so unusual they warranted laboratory analysis or were at risk of theft because they lay near the road, Spangler said.

The university's archaeological team so far has done no excavating — only mapping, tree-ring dating and recording of 367 surface sites, leader Duncan Metcalfe said. He said he hopes to begin excavation in summer.

Wilcox says the road along the canyon floor is now torn up and dusty in summer. Spider webs of new foot trails are appearing around sites.