Comb Ridge Ruins

A Tour Through The Broken Heart Of Joplin

This combination of two satellite images provided by GeoEye and MJ Harden shows, above, an area of Joplin, Mo. which includes a view of the Joplin High School toward the upper right hand corner of the frame, taken in August of 2009 and, below, the same area of Joplin is shown, including the high school, taken Tuesday May 24, 2011, two days after a devastating tornado tore through the city, killing at least 122 people.

This combination of two satellite images provided by GeoEye and MJ Harden shows, above, an area of Joplin, Mo. which includes a view of the Joplin High School toward the upper right hand corner of the frame, taken in August of 2009 and, below, the same area of Joplin is shown, including the high school, taken Tuesday May 24, 2011, two days after a devastating tornado tore through the city, killing at least 122 people.

Standing amid the ruins of what had been a Goodyear service center, Robert Alves turns in place to take a grim inventory.

That twisted pile next door, he says, was a Jiffy Lube. The shell out back there, a sporting goods store. Over there was a Pizza Hut. And that massive heap across 20th Street used to be the Home Depot.

"Lots of used-to-be's around here," the 36-year-old mechanic says. "ALL used-to-be's."

Even harder to identify is what will be.

The tornado that tore through Joplin Sunday essentially bifurcated this city of 50,000, carving a west-to-east path up to a mile wide that almost beggars description.

"Think about a lawnmower, taking the biggest lawnmower, and just mowing everything down," says Heather Marsh, whose house was in the shadow of the shattered St. John's Regional Medical Center. "It truly makes you feel how insignificant (life) really is. You feel so small and helpless."

Before Sunday, the former mining boomtown was perhaps best known — if known at all to many Americans — as a sometime home base for outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and as a stop along Historic Route 66. Now, it is the site of the nation's eighth-deadliest tornado.

At least 125 are dead, and possibly hundreds remain unaccounted for. More than 900 were injured.

On Wednesday, arduous rescue and recovery work went on, with crews repeating grid searches that started immediately after the storm. No new survivors were pulled from wreckage of the city's neighborhoods, but officials said after checking some areas for a fourth time that they planned a fifth sweep. Leaders of St. John's sent in structural engineers to see if the hospital could be saved.

Gassaway's Adventures: ANASAZI RUINS OF COMB RIDGE

South of Moab in the southeastern corner of the state is a large area where there is a concentration of Anasazi Ruins.  These ruins vary is size, condition and ease of access. Two years ago, we explored some of these ruins, but only scratched the surface.  On this trip we scratched a little more.  Mike, having remembered a photo of House on Fire post After arriving in Bluff, it was time to start roughing it again, so we found a campsite in town and set up the tents. I'm not sure what the attraction to sleeping in a tent is, but our next two nights showed us what the attraction is to sleeping in a motel. The first night was close to freezing and pretty miserable until Cathie allowed me to spoon. The second night was much warmer, but the wind blew so bad that all the sand on the outside of the tent ended up on the inside. The ruins we saw were in various states of repair.  Some just a small portion of the walls remain.  This one is pretty typical of one in good shape.  Many fall down over time due to the weather, but many are destroyed by vandals or people looking for artifacts.  The small building on the right appears to be on oven.  It is built with earth and not the stone of the main building.  The black on the ceiling is soot from years of fires.  Most of these sites were occupied anywhere from 900 to 1300 years ago. Our next stop was Monarch Ruin, again a short 30 minute from the road.  This ruin was really impressive, but due to it's steep access with an exposure on a cliff, we elected to view it from a distance.  Even where we were able to walk, there was evidence of old buildings and human activity.  Lots of pictographs and petroglyphs on the cliff face.

Backcountry Adventures Utah, The Ultimate Guide to the Utah Backcountry for Anyone with a Sport Utility Vehicle

Comb Ridge and Its People, The Ethnohistory of a Rock

4WD Trails: Southeast Utah

Puebloan ruins of the Southwest

The Rough Guide to Southwest USA