AL SCORUP Cattleman of the Canyons BY N E A L L A M B E R T
In the spring of 1891, near a wide place in the Colorado River called Dandy Crossing,1 a 19-year-old boy headed his horse through the red sand and willows along the river edge toward the mouth of White Creek. Behind him trailed an extra horse packed with a couple of patchwork quilts, some flour, bacon, and pinto beans. Ahead of him, in the wild and beautiful breaks of White Canyon, was a chance to be a cattleman. That, more than anything else, was what Al Scorup wanted to be.2 From the time when he was a little boy, when he and his brother Jim rode stick horses around their yard in Salina and "branded" imaginary calves with pieces of twisted wire, John Albert Scorup had wanted to be a "cattleman." Once he earned 400 lambs helping his father with a cooperaMr. Lambert is a candidate for the doctorate in English at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. In preparing this article the author received much assistance from friends of Al Scorup and members of his family. The help of Henry Lyman, Veda Williams, Harve Williams, Merrill Nelson, and many others is gratefully acknowledged. The author also spent three weeks as a cowhand working for the Scorup-Somerville Cattle Company. To the "Flying V Bar" cowboys, Billy Shupe, Lou Schmidt, "Hide" Scott, and the foreman, "Cy" Thornell, who added so much to his knowledge of Al Scorup and the canyon cattle business, the author is much indebted. Located on most road maps as Hite, Utah, White Canyon, one of those fantastic gorges that drain west from the Blue Mountains, breaks into the Colorado gorge at this point. 2 Stena Scorup, / . A. Scorup, A Utah Cattleman (Privately printed, 1944), 25.
