The River Blog

Today’s guest blog is by Kim Cannon.

The Upper Green River where it exits the Wind River Range | Scott Bosse

Imagine a proposal to dam the wild river, and the valley it cut, where your family has lived and worked and gathered together for almost 90 years. Put aside for the moment that the dam would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and that there is no current need or use for the water. Just think about the undammed wild river, the glacial cut wilderness valley – the place itself.

For five generations my family has been more defined by this place than any other – or any thing. My grandfather Stan Decker first came into the Upper Green River Valley in 1925 on a hunting trip. In one way or another we have been there ever since. We were not the first to settle there. We were “newcomers,” in his words. Many others came before us: the Native Americans; the Civil War veteran homesteader Robert Osborn, who supplemented subsistence agriculture working with many others as a tie hack, and whose hand-hewn cabins survive; Abner Luman, the cattle baron, who could ride from Green River Lakes to Rock Springs and camp on his own place every night. My granddad bought the place from Luman and built the GP Bar Ranch, a successful dude ranch, raising and running up to 150 horses and bringing people in to hunt and fish from all over the world.

The ranch, nestled in the pines on the shore of Green River Lake – turned emerald green by the glacial silt runoff, with its white sand beach, surrounded by mountains that rise almost 4,000 feet on all sides of it – maintained a special place in the memories of everyone who ever saw it. Big Sheep, Osborn, White Rock and, of course, Squaretop, are the iconic mountains that preside over the river valley. On the edge of what is now the Bridger Wilderness Area, with the Continental Divide Trail running alongside of it, our place straddled the outlet of Green River Lake.

Unable to run the ranch, my grandfather sold the main place back to the Forest Service in 1966, wanting to be assured that no development would ever degrade it. He was a rock-ribbed conservative who thought that being an ardent conservationist was the logical extension of being an authentic conservative. His spirit remains; the spinning in his grave we all detect surprises no one.

Kim Cannon and his wife, Susie, on the Upper Green River | Scott Bosse

We held onto the Desert Homestead about two miles down the river where we still are. For a number of years I ran a pack outfit from it. Earlier this summer we gathered with nineteen of us – four generations extending from my 89-year-old mother, Bette Jeanne, who first came into this valley as an infant, to her great-grandchildren. We are committed to this place for the long haul. We have the good luck to be here and be able to see it for what it is. Join us. Help us persuade the Governor of Wyoming and those myopic state water planners that Green River Lakes and the Green River within the Bridger Teton National Forest should never be dam sites. Let the river be.

To register your opposition to building new dams on the Upper Green River, send a message to Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead or call him at (307) 777-7434.

Kim Cannon is an attorney from Sheridan, Wyoming. His family has a 90-year history of ranching on the Upper Green River just downstream from Green River Lake.