The photo was taken when my dad, Clyde King, was driving cattle probably to King Bench or to the Circle Cliffs. Much of the country looks like this in what we Boulder people called Down Below. I don't now how it got that name. Maybe the cowboys went through a little hell herding cattle in those rugged canyons and mesas.
Another rancher, Truman Lyman, had to get their cattle out of one of those canyon one winter during heavy snow. He said, "We only took the Lyman cattle, we left the King cattle and they all died." Since he later became a churchman, I felt like he felt a little guilt for leaving those cattle. Those trail were very dangerous and the cattle wild and unperdictable.
I drove cattle up the trail to King Bench and also drove them off the same trail. On old cow was so thristy and hungry, she ran out on the edge of the cliff to get a mouth full of grass and the edge broke off and she fell into the canyon, called The Gultch and died.
Daddy broke a leg on that same trail when his horse fell. My mom, Irene and I went down to pick him up. The men who had come to help went ahead of us. I ask how they got him out of there. He said, "After we put on a splint, we carried him off, four men...one on each corner of a blanket down the trail. Once down, we walked with four horses with him in the middle tied to each saddle with a lasso. We moved slowly up the canyon. It was not an easy ride for a man with a broken leg and horses walking in the dark." I remember we waited and waited a waited until they arrive about three in the morning. We load him in the back of the Power Wagon for another bumpy ride home...where they switch cars again to take him the 100 miles to the hospital where they could set the leg and put a cast on.