Robbers Roost

"Robbers’ Roost is the name of a godforsaken section of country beginning about twenty miles east and southeast of Hanksville in the southeastern part of Utah covering the lower reaches of the San Rafael River to where it empties into the Colorado River. It is about seventy miles long, North and South, and fifty miles wide, and is about the greatest natural rock fortress in the United States, and maybe the world. It is a regular jigsaw puzzle of deep, narrow gorges with high mesas between. Some of these mesas are entirely surrounded by straight rock walls, sometimes a thousand feet high and more, and the only way you can get on top is by airplane. But we didn’t have airplanes in those days." – Matt Warner from The Last of the Bandit Riders

Robbers Roost is part of the legendary Outlaw Trail–a two-hundred mile trail consisting of three major hideouts. Perhaps the most famous, and furthest north, of the three is the Hole-in-the-Wall area in Wyoming.  Brown’s Hole (later Brown’s Park) was another hideout along the outlaw trail. Brown’s Hole is a canyon area located near the borders of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming along the Green River. The hideouts were position roughly north to south with Robbers Roost being the southernmost hideout.

Located between the Colorado, Green and Dirty Devil Rivers, Robbers Roost was a natural fortress. Then as now, the terrain consists of a complex maze of canyons, multiple dead ends and countless vantage points. Combined with the extreme heat of the area and it was not a place for those unfamiliar to the Roost’s secrets. The Roost remained impervious to outsiders (read lawmen) for over thirty years.

Gunplay Maxwell wrote to wrote Governor Heber M. Wells from prison that the Roost was defended by a well-armed, 200-man gang with an intricate system of fortifications, tunnels, land mines, and a vast storehouse of supplies and ammunition.

Robbers Roost is said to have received its name sometime in the 1870’s due to Cap Brown. Brown was a noted rustler operating out of Utah and often used the area to hide out. In later years Robbers Roost would become a frequent stop for Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch.

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