Giles was in Blue Valley, eleven miles northeast of Caineville on U-24. Hanksville is seven miles east. Hyrum Burgess was one of the first men in the Blue Valley along the Fremont River. The developing community was named to honor their religious leader and prominent citizen, Mormon Bishop Henry Giles. Alternating water shortages and floods with accumulating salts in the soil ruined the cropland and by 1919 the town was abandoned. Today the area is being reclaimed and farming is again predominant. Remnants of the former town are still evident.

Had I suspected that our old brown mare intended to die in the ghost town of Giles, I would not have gone on that long journey which led me into Blue Valley back in the spring of 1935. And had I not gone, I would not have experienced the mystic sadness of that long-deserted place -- an aura that has kept me coming back again and again to visit Blue Valley.

Blue Valley lies east of what is now known as Capitol Reef National Park. As a boy I lived in Torrey, on the west edge of the park.

When I was 14, my father, a school teacher, purchased a farm to supplement his meager Depression-days income. And I was to tend a flock of sheep on the high benchlands above the farm.

Well, as a shepherd I needed a pony. When my father announced he had been offered a 3-year-old bay mustang in trade for our old brown work mare, I was as delighted as any boy could be.

E.L. Abbott and wife owned the house a short time, May 12, 1899, to November 14, 1907.

Abbott sold to William Andrews and wife. Andrews sold it to George P.
Pectol and wife January 9, 1912. Then to L.B. Moss and wife, January 31, 1929.

After the second flood the Mosses could not live there any more. The house was sold to Charles W. Davis, his son-in-law, and his wife Hazel. Then the Mosses moved to to California.