In 1916, when Reuben C. Syrett — Ruby to his friends — settled in the wilds of Southern Utah, he was unaware of the unique landscape nearby. A couple of weeks after the move, another rancher told him about the local canyon called Bryce, named for a man who’d lost his cow among the hoodoos decades before. Traveling to see it one Sunday with his family, Ruby was so taken with the beauty of the place, he began to spread the word about the unusual geology—an amphitheater of delicate rock spires the color of a sunset.
