Outlaw Country.

• Author: Hulet, Renon K.

Utah's infamous bandit hideouts offer hidden treasures of recreational opportunities.

In 1975 Robert Redford, with a National Geographic Magazine-sponsored group, explored by horseback and raft, segments of the Outlaw Trail. In his book by that name he writes, "Names tumbled into memory -- Jesse James, Bat Masterson, Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane -- echoes from our Western past. I had been told the trail was real, that you could find parts still in existence, if you knew where to look."

Four spectacular climatic seasons and a multiplicity of landscapes create an infinite palette of outdoor recreational and wilderness possibilities. With a passionate commitment to the arts, sports and education, it's no wonder that millions of dollars are dropped annually by tourists in Utah for everything from skiing to ballet, gunfighting to sculpture, biking to quilting, opera to dinosaurs, rodeo to belly dancing.

A huge share of the allure attributed to tourism in Utah is inextricably tied to history -- most notably, Utah's famous Mormon pioneer history. Yet, there is an equally intriguing aspect underpinning some of Utah's lesser-known but fascinating recreational opportunities -- Utah's infamous outlaw history.

Concurrent with religion, culture and civilization spreading throughout the Western territories, bands of notable criminals were also robbing banks, payrolls and trains, rustling cattle, and spilling a lot of blood in the process. They found the perfect place for hiding out from the law in the wilderness areas carved by the Green and Colorado rivers and their tributaries bordering Utah from Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona.

"Hiding out" is also the purpose of today's modern, hopefully law-abiding, adventurers who choose to leave city life and the pressures of everyday living behind. Two interesting trips which take you directly within pockets of the outlaw trails, enmeshed in environments that have remained largely unchanged for a century, are fly-fishing the Green River below Flaming Gorge Dam and riding horseback along outlaw escape routes.

Escape to the Green

Bob Johnson, vice president of marketing and sales for Provo-based U.S. Synthetic Corporation, makers of synthetic diamonds for exploration drilling, is an avid outdoor adventurer. Even touring on his screaming yellow Harley Davidson pales, he says, to floating Brown's Park on the Green River. "The fishing's great, but the history knocks me out."

No single location on the outlaw...