PHOTO OF BUTCH CASSIDY'S FAMILY HOME

I took this picture of the old family home on my way to Richfield the other day. Butch has become part of Southern Utah History. I took his sister, Lula Parker Bettinsen for a drive down the canyon one day when she was trying to sell some of the Parker's property in Circleville Canyon. She told stories of what she knew about Butch as she was born after he left home. At 92 she wrote the book Butch Cassidy, My Brother dictating to her granddaughter.
I wrote the following poem after reading her book.

GRANDMA PARKER

Lula, the sister of Butch,
Did what she wanted to do.
Wrote the story of LeRoy Parker
when she was 92.

Now go and read that book.
See what she had to say,
This poem is about her Granma,
The decision she made that day.

Grandma pushed a handcart
Across the lonely plain.
She pushed and pulled and tugged
Through beating sun and rain.

She crossed the many rivers
And suffered heat and cold,
She climbed the Rocky Mountains
On and On that handcart rolled.

The elders said they had made it
Would roll into Salt Lake that day.
Everything that Grandma owned
In that handcart lay.

As she pushed through Emigration Canyon
After monts on the westward road,
She suddenly couldn't take it.
She could not stand the load.

Giving a scream and a mighty shove
She pushed toward the edge
Then that handcart teetered
And she shoved it off the ledge.

All her things went flying...
The handcart broke apart.
She walked into Salt Lake City
Satisfaction in her heart.

BUTCH CASSIDY'S CABIN

This picture came out in a sleek magazine by Zion's Bank last week. Circleville folk decided to make this cabin into a stop for tourists and fixed up the cabin, added pictures, redid the plaster between the logs, put up a picnic table and opened up. When all the pictures had been stolen, the chink removed from between the logs, and people began chipping souvineers from the logs, they closed again. The picture shows the cabin when it was fixed. Circleville is less than 30 miles from Panguitch. I could ride my Old Lady Bike there. (but won't)
I was in Cannonville talking to people about stories of the past and they told me about Laura Johnson Babs who rode with Butch Cassidy's bunch. I can find no history about her actually being part of the gang, but who knows? I like a good story.

OUTLAW LADY LAURA

Take our own outlaw Butch Cassidy
From up Piute way
Had the roughest, toughest Wild Bunch
Or so they always say.

But did you know Lady Laura
Who rode the Chisholm Trail?
She could keep up with The Bunch
Side-saddle, without fail.

Her heart she gave to Billy Moore.
Her trading post drew outlaw fame
At the head of the Paria
Bandits knew her name.

She rode by horse to Texas
Some twenty times, they say.
She was there when banks
were robbed, and she took her pay.

The story goes that Bill
Along with Butch and Dance
Robbed Kanab Bank and said goodby
Taking an awful chance.

Laura waited long and watched
For Billy to return to her.
She rode three times to Texas
Sticking her horse like a burr.

Her love was gone. He was lost.
She waited through the years.
No one came. No news was heard
To quiet her deathly fears.

Finally she wed another
The years went slowly by...
Then one day Billy Babs returned.
She met him with a cry.

She divorced her husband
When divorce was grim.
She left with Billy.
She married him.

This outlaw woman's behavior
shocked the good folks there.
Her name was not mentioned.
No one seemed to care.

Not long after, she returned.
To live her last years alone.
She couldn't live with the outlaw.
She wouldn't go bck home.

So the story died, a smothered death
But I'mn reviving it, ya see?
All this attention given old Butch
Ought to be shared, seems to me.

With the side-saddle rider, Miss Laura
Starry-eyed in love she fell,
And rode with the gang called The Wild Bunch
on their midnight rides to hell.