Nature News from the Ghost Horse Hills: Opal Wildfire Update #18

August 2, 2010

Davy

Davy Crockett

King of the wild frontier

Most baby boomers will recognize those words as part of the theme song from the 1950s TV series 'The Adventures of Davy Crockett'. The part of Davy Crockett was played by Fess Parker. Mr. Parker also played the part of Daniel Boone another American frontier hero.

On March 18, 2010 Fess Parker passed away at the age of 85. In so doing he joins the likes of Roy Rogers, Rex Allen, Gene Autry, Audie Murphy, John Wayne and other 1940 & 50s actors who played the part of cowboys and mountain men on the TV and silver screens.

On the TV or at the Saturday matinees in movies like 'Old Yeller', 'My Friend Flicka', 'Green Grass of Wyoming', 'Jeremiah Johnson' or 'The Searchers' -- 'My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys' (thanks for the song Willie).

The quiet freedom and adventure depicted in the open spaces of these old dusters were what most appealed to me. It is those movies that first drew me to the outdoors and the world of nature. It is the experiences that I find there that bring me back to the land and the trails that intermingle along the Athabasca Landing Trail. Throughout the Ghost Horse Hills and on the Opal, Halfmoon Lake and Bridge Lakes Natural Areas there are trails that have seen human use for over 150 years. As I hike or ride my pony over these trails I see myself back with the Chipewyan, Wood Cree and the Métis or as one of the men with the Hudson's Bay or Northwest Trading Companies. I see myself alongside men like Radisson and Groseilliers, Anthony Henday or with David Thompson and his wife Charlotte. . . or with John Gullion.

Who is John Gullion you ask? In my opinion, one of the greatest frontier heroes anyplace, anytime. And one of history's best-kept secrets. In most records, John's name appears only in passing. . . as a footnote. But as you filter through the records, his name appears over and over again most often as part of a long list of other names. These lists soon start to paint a picture of what the man was -- a hunter, trapper, fur-trader, guide and interpreter for the NorthWest Mounted Police, a tracker of scows on the Athabasca River, a freighter on the Landing Trail, the first homesteader/farmer north of the Sturgeon River, a businessman operating a stopping house and Captain of the sternwheeler Grahame. He played the fiddle, was known as a notorious prankster and in his spare time he built river scows (otherwise know as 'sturgeon-heads').

The Gullion homestead is just four miles north of the Redwater Bridge on the Athabasca Landing Trail. There is not much left of the site. The school named after Gullion is gone. All that remain are the land and the open spaces that were the backdrop to the John Gullion stories.

In the Davy Crockett song there is a line that states that 'Davy killed his first bear when he was just three'. Such is the way of oral storytelling. Dozens of stories about John Gullion still circulate and if they're not all true they should be because they're just too good to stop telling. There's enough stories to make a movie with a theme song of its own like:

Johnny

Johnny Gullion

King of the Landing Trail.

Okay, so I'm not Ian Tyson, David Archibald (or Willie Nelson for that matter), it's the thought that counts.

Thanks.

Richard

(Scroll down for pictures)

A string of river scows on the Athabasca River. Take note of the guys on the bank with the rope in their hands. They are pulling (tracking) those scows upriver.

The steam-powered sternwheeler 'Grahame' that John Gullion captained.

This section is part of a trail that went from the Landing Trail at Halfmoon Lake to the Victoria Trail at the Vinca Ferry. It is at least 120 years old.