Getting lost in Adobe Town

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Hoodoos and labyrinthine canyons typify the Adobe Town landscape in Wyoming's Red Desert. The BLM designated 80,000 acres of Adobe Town a Wilderness Study Area, and a Citizens' Proposed Wilderness seeks to more than double the amount of protected area. (Photo/Morgan E. Heim)

The canyon walls curve and twist into narrowing darkness. Natural archways appear and disappear with a slight shift of your point of view. In an instant towering forests of hoodoos give way to pockets of open space paved with the remnants of old river beds.

There are no trails here. Just the metamorphosing mountains and sun guide your way. Southeastern Red Desert’s Adobe Town is the perfect place to disappear, something that could come in handy if you’re a train robber from the 19th century.

Legend has it that Butch Cassidy and his band of ruffians hid horses in Adobe Town, where they would escape into a maze of hoodoos, hiding out until the dust settled from their latest heist. Go there today and you probably won’t come across bandits, but you can step into the wild solitude of the Old West, exploring caves and tunnels, watching herds of antelope and mustang, and finding birds of prey nesting in the rocks.

To learn more about this unique landscape and some of the efforts to protect it, watch the following video by the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.

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Filed under Adobe Town, Butch Cassidy, Conservation Photography, Desert, Energy Boom, Energy Development, Great Divide Basin, History, Into the Big Empty, Lonely Places, Oil and Gas, Red Desert, The Big Empty, The Old West, Western Legends, Wyoming

Tags: Adobe Town, Big Empty, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, BLM, Bureau of Land Management, Canyons, Center for Environmental Journalism, conservation, Conservation Photography, Desert, drilling, Energy Boom, Energy Development, environmental issues, environmental photography, environmental photojournalism, History, Hoodoos, land management, land use, Mustangs, natural gas, nature, Oil and Gas, oil and gas industry, Old West, pronghorn antelope, red, Red Desert, southwest wyoming, The Big Empty, The Great American desert, unexplored, west, Wild Horses, wilderness, Wyoming