Josie Bassett Morris Ranch Complex, Historic ranch complex in Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, United States.
The Josie Bassett Morris Ranch Complex stands along Cub Creek in Dinosaur National Monument, Uintah County, Utah. Its core is a low square log cabin with a later kitchen addition, surrounded by a chicken house, outhouse, root cellar, sheds and a small barn. A bridge once crossed the creek to the root cellar.
The Bassett family moved west from Arkansas around 1877 and established a ranch in Browns Park near the Colorado-Wyoming border. Josie Bassett married Jim McKnight in 1893 at age 19. In 1914 she and her husband M.B. (Ben) Morris filed a homestead claim on Cub Creek near Split Mountain, about 40 miles from the family ranch, with help from Fred McKnight and the Chew family. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 19, 1986.
Josie Bassett Morris lived in the cabin for over fifty years and was known locally as a colorful character: she married five times, divorced four husbands, and was tried and acquitted for cattle rustling in her sixties. Visitors can see the homestead where she raised her son Crawford and where grandchildren came to stay.
The complex lies in Dinosaur National Monument, reached by the monument's roads to Cub Creek. The National Park Service keeps an interpretive display at the site. Paths are unpaved and the area is remote, so plan for rough ground and limited services.
Josie Bassett Morris was tried and acquitted for cattle rustling in her sixties, and she lived in the Cub Creek cabin for over fifty years until she fell on ice and broke her hip in 1963; she died the following year at ninety. Visitors can still see the small log cabin where she stayed.
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