Charles Kelly came to a Mormon valley for a river and an orchard, and ended up guarding a national monument for almost no pay. Boone tells the story of a stubborn man, his unpaid wife, and the neighbors he never quite won over.
"I belong to no organizations of any kind whatever, never go out socially, not interested in politics, and hate radios." That's a man describing himself, and the government is about to give him a uniform. Charles Kelly was born in a Michigan logging camp, grew up hating his strict father, came away with a distaste for all religion, and you'd think a fellow like that might settle anywhere but Utah. He settled in Utah. He ran a print shop, wrote The Outlaw Trail on Butch Cassidy, and at fifty-two sold out and went hunting for a river. His wife Harriette said no to Hite and no to Ticaboo, both out on the Colorado, so in nineteen forty-one they landed in Fruita to buy an orchard, and the war ran land out of his reach. In forty-four they made him custodian of the national monument here, for a hundred and twenty dollars a year and a house. Harriette drew nothing, did much of the work, and practically never saw anyone to talk to. She was, a family friend said, "beginning to get choked up about it." When real money came, six years on, he had to sit the civil service exam for the job he already had, and he failed it, on experience. He appealed twice and won, and at sixty-one he got a uniform and a new government pickup, "which," he wrote, "bites the natives," meaning his neighbors. One historian says the Park Service "gave the residents of Wayne County Charles Kelly, a Mormon-baiting historian and Western trails buff," and Kelly single-handedly protected this place all the same. Kelly had his own answer. "I really ought to move to California, but if I did the Mormons would say they ran me out of Utah, so I stay just to spite them." Give me that new pickup rolling through the orchards, a small man at the wheel behind a cigar, and a whole valley at its fences, watching him stay.
Photo: NPS / Natt N. Dodge and Paul R. Franke · Public domain (U.S. Government work)