DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's got the story, and here's my telling of it — straight from the official record, with maybe a little campfire smoke blown in for flavor. Now, somewhere east of where you're rolling right now, there's a cut in the earth called Putoff Canyon. Named for a Mr.
Putoff — an early settler out in Kent County. That's all the marker gives us on the man himself, just that name hanging in the dry air like a hawk riding a thermal. Mr.
Putoff. Whoever he was, he left his name on the land, and the land kept it. Here's the thing that made this canyon worth noticing in the first place.
You're out in a region of salt water — not the ocean kind, but the kind that makes the ground bitter and the drinking even worse. And right in the middle of all that, Putoff Canyon had a freshwater spring. Not just a trickle.
Not just enough to wet your lips. A spring strong enough, they said, to swim a horse. You stop and think about what that means out here, in this country, in that era.
A spring like that wasn't just a convenience. It was a miracle with a geographical address. And word got around.
Between 1900 and 1914, this canyon became a resort — a genuine resort — drawing artists from far and wide. Painters, dreamers, people who needed big sky and raw land and something that looked like the West before the West got tamed. They found it here.
Among those who came looking was Zane Grey, the western writer. He saw this region and he didn't just visit it — he used it. Set his novel The Thundering Herd right here in this landscape.
Zane Grey wrote the West the way the West wanted to be remembered, and Putoff Canyon gave him something real to build it on. A settler's name, a spring that could float a horse, a canyon full of artists, and a novelist who turned all of it into legend. Not bad for a place most folks drive right past.
What the marker says
(East of here) Named for a Mr. Putoff, early settler. In region of Salt Water, canyon was noted for its freshwater spring "strong enough to swim a horse". Area was a resort, 1900-1914, for many artists. Western writer Zane Grey used region as setting for his novel "The Thundering Herd". (1969)