Forest Service range technician knows mountain range like no other

It’s been 18 years since his close encounter with that mountain lion, and Paul Dart still isn’t sure which one of them was more startled. Though uncommon, spotting a mountain lion in the Stansbury Mountains didn’t surprise the seasoned range technician. Seeing one locked in a dead sprint toward him, however, did.

Dart was riding a colt near the top of Baker Canyon when the normally reclusive predator, spooked by a fire crew helicopter, darted inadvertently in his direction. A collision was averted only when the colt snorted and the cat made a split-second direction change 30 yards out.

“He was cookin’ right to me,” Dart recalled with a chuckle.

Even more fascinating than the actual tale is the nonchalant way he recounts it; as if things like this happen to him every day. In fact, few people — if any — know the Stansbury Mountains like Dart does. There are two dozen major canyons in the Stansburys, and Dart has at least one story like this for each of them.

“My wife says I think I own the whole mountain range,” Dart said as he stood outside the old U.S. Forest Service cabin in South Willow Canyon on a sunny morning last week. Dart, 68, has managed federal grazing lands in the Stansburys for 42 summers. “I’ve been here for so long it’s just become part of me.”

Dart began his seasonal Forest Service career with the Spanish Fork Ranger District in 1961, just after graduating from high school. But that summer job quickly became a passion. Dart stayed with the Forest Service while earning a teaching degree from BYU. In 1964, he took a job teaching science in Wendover, but continued working the Spanish Fork Ranger District each summer.

When Dart was transferred to Tooele High School in 1966, he set his sights on the Stansburys. Finally he could develop his passions for teaching and range care in the same locality. He and his wife, Geneal, raised four children — three of whom now work in the education field.

Dart was recognized early on in the school district as a jack of all trades. In addition to teaching earth science and physical education, he was tasked with coaching Tooele High School’s wrestling team, a role he held for 25 years. He also assisted with football, track, and baseball before retiring in 2001.

“I coached just about everything there,” he said.

Dart’s do-it-all reputation was an asset to the Forest Service as well. His primary responsibility is managing the Stansbury Range’s five livestock grazing allotments, but other tasks often find their way to him.

“I do a little bit of everything over here,” Dart said. “I get the cows on and off, make sure they’re not overgrazing. I was on flood control on Sunday. We have rangers come over from Salt Lake, but by and large I’m the only one over here.”

Dart regularly assists firefighting crews as a resource adviser because of his intimate knowledge of the terrain.

“I know where the roads are. I know where the structures are,” he said.

Dart recalled a humorous occasion several years back when he was asked by county sheriff’s deputies to assist them in investigating a dubious-looking homemade greenhouse in the mountains.

“They were sure it was drugs,” he recalled. “They snuck up on it and pulled their spotting scopes.”

To Dart’s amusement, and the deputies’ embarrassment, the greenhouse contained only tomato plants.

“The biggest tomato plants they had ever seen, and that was our big drug bust,” Dart laughed.

Dart spends most of his mountain hours conducting range utilization studies and ensuring that ranchers who hold permits to graze their cattle there are doing so responsibly. To do that he must visit the allotments, which means he logs countless hours riding horseback along dirt roads and forgotten trails. Listening to Dart speak of the various canyons and their history, one gets the impression that his daily journeys are just as important as his destinations.

[The Stansbury Range] is pretty unique,” Dart explained. “There’s such a transition zone. You go from the desert floor down in the dust to the real alpine stuff at 11,000 feet. You can find about whatever you want here.”

Indeed, the Stansburys differ from other ranges in the Great Basin. The range owes much of its uniqueness to its high elevation and topographic prominence. With the 11,030-foot Deseret Peak as their crown, the Stansburys are the most prominent range east of the Ruby Mountains in Nevada. Thus, they receive large amounts of orographic precipitation, which occurs when a storm encounters and is forced upward by a physiographic obstacle.

The Stansburys are climactically more similar to the Wasatch Mountains to the east than they are to other Great Basin ranges. The heavy snows that occur at the peaks feed many perennial streams, giving rise to a wide range of vegetation types. A drive up South Willow Canyon is arguably the best way to experience spring foliage in the county.

“We’re pretty undiscovered,” Dart said. “There’s a lot of secrets here — some holes, some really neat places that people don’t get to because they’re not on the trail system.”

For logistical reasons, Dart spends several nights per month in the ranger cabin at the South Willow guard station instead of at his Tooele home. Basing his horses in the pasture behind the cabin makes the rides shorter and easier for them on hot days.

The cabin, which Dart believes was built sometime in the 1930s, is maintained by Geneal. Its tidy interior is punctuated by Americana and patriotic décor. The small shed behind it is just as old. On its door jambs are the pen scrawlings made by various Forest Service hands dating back to the ‘70s.

“It was our way of keeping track of the horses at the time,” Dart explained. He wrote the last note in 1983. He semi-seriously lamented not continuing the door jamb log. He then lamented, perhaps more seriously, the fact that more people seem to discover his mountain range every year.

“Every year we get a few more visitors. On weekends, South and North Willow canyons are zoos,” he said.

Dart glanced affectionately at the rocky peaks westward. The air in the canyon teemed with birdsong and the gush of a creek brimming with spring runoff — the perfect soundtrack for a hard day’s work.