Man Who Lived in Arizona Cave Expelled

Here is a news story from a few years ago. It reminded me of a story that a friend of mine told me once upon a time. He worked on Ted Turner's Vermejo Park Ranch, it is located in New Mexico and it was so huge that they found a guy living on the property and he thought he was living on public land. He had no idea that what seemed like the wide open spaces and wildness was private property. I mean it is 588,000-acres and so they sent him on his way with no trouble but he had a teepee and everything set up and thought he was the mountain man. I felt bad for the guy to think that he wanted to be away from the madness of cities and all and yet he couldn't get away from the control.

Well here is the news brief from a few years ago about another man...


A man was evicted from a cave he had lived in for 11 years after pleading guilty to using a national forest for residential purposes.

Thomas J. Crawford had a bed, books and clothes arranged on hangers, along with pots and cutlery for cooking in his cave in the Coconino National Forest in northern Arizona.
He was arrested Friday after a Flagstaff resident reported a suspicious camp.

Crawford pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on Monday and was sentenced to one year of probation and banned from the forest.

He told Forest Service officials he would come to Flagstaff every week or so to get supplies and water. Sometimes, he would work here.

Crawford, accompanied by Forest Service officials and a reporter from the Arizona Daily Sun, was allowed to remove his possessions after he was released from jail Tuesday.

"As you can see, I don't have a TV or anything," he said. "I've got the sky, the wind, the rain, the canyon wrens. ... This is a beautiful mountain. You could explore it a lifetime."