Deep in the Sierra Madre, nestled between two wilderness areas on a long dirt road toward Hog Park, is the unmistakable Snoopy Rock.
He been sitting there for at least 30 years along Forest Service Road 550, roughly halfway between Encampment and Hog Park Reservoir, pinpoints Aaron Voos, spokesman for the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest.
Impossible to miss, the tall boulder is painted white and black with a single eye watching people disappear into the timber to hunt, fish, camp, and hike.
There isn't a plaque explaining the famous beagle, and nobody seems to know who painted him, but they know it's there.
“It is definitely a local landmark,” Brush Creek/Hayden District Ranger Sevi Shperun said.
'Are We There Yet?'
The road to Hog Park can be rough and curvy, and depending on conditions, the trip can take about an hour. That makes Snoopy more than scenery. For some families, he's a progress report.
Patty Waldron first spotted the rock about five years ago while making what has become an annual trip to Hog Park Reservoir.
Her son from Lander told her Snoopy marks the halfway point between the Highway 70 turnoff and the reservoir.
For Waldron, it brings back one of the eternal questions of childhood.
“It reminds me when as a child you’d ask your parents, ‘Are we there yet?’” she said.
“Nowadays my grandkids are asking PaPa and Grandma, ‘Tell us when you can see Snoopy,’” Waldron said. “It’s a fun and memorable part to our annual trip.”
Familiar Face
Sade Wilson was five weeks old the first time her family took her into the country around Hog Park. She's 29 now and she can't remember Snoopy not being there.
She can't remember Snoopy not being there.
For Wilson, the rock is stitched into the geography of a place her family returns to year after year.
They hunt there every fall, and Snoopy is part of the trip. They stop and take pictures, letting their kids crawl on the boulder.
When Wilson was a child, she remembers her family heading into the area on the lookout for the dog.
Now her daughter watches for him.
“She's like, ‘Are we going hunting where Snoopy Rock is?’” Wilson said. “I'm like, ‘Yep.’”
It's an inheritance so peculiar that Wilson laughs at herself trying to explain it.
“It's so dumb because it's a rock, but we used to get so excited about it as kids, and my daughter now gets so excited about it,” she said.
That's what nearly three decades can do to a painted boulder.
Wilson doesn't know Snoopy's backstory or who first put him there, but she has often wondered.
Somebody Did It
At some point, somebody hauled paint up Forest Service Road 550 and transformed a plain slab of Wyoming stone into Snoopy.
Paint exposed to decades of Sierra Madre winters doesn't stay crisp forever, and yet it appears someone has been keeping it fresh.
“We wonder every year, like, who goes up there and makes sure Snoopy stays Snoopy,” Wilson said. “I would love to know.”
Technically, he shouldn't be there.
“We classify that as vandalism,” Voos said. “That's graffiti, in the same way that, you know, if someone painted something inappropriate on that rock.”
The Forest Service doesn't know who painted Snoopy either.
As for why someone selected that particular boulder for the transformation, Voos noted it is conveniently close to the road and said flatly:
“I think it's just a flat rock, quite honestly.”
Snoopy, We Have A Problem
Painting rocks in a national forest is illegal, Voos said, and Forest Service law enforcement officers can ticket people caught doing it.
The agency doesn't want Snoopy's longevity interpreted as an invitation for aspiring artists to start decorating the surrounding mountains.
Graffiti is a recurring problem on national forest land, and one painted rock can encourage the next person to leave something behind.
“If someone sees a painted rock, they think, ‘Oh, wouldn't it be great if I could paint a rock?’” Voos said.
So why, after all these years, is Snoopy still sitting there?
Resources.
The Forest Service has other work to do, and removing a giant cartoon dog from a boulder in the Sierra Madre hasn't risen high enough on the list.
“If we did have staff, we would get rid of it,” Voos said.
'I Would Be Lost'
“It's certainly visible. It catches your eye when you're driving by,” he said. “Literally, you can't miss it.”
And he understands the two questions that follow almost immediately.
“Why is that there, and who did it?” he said. “I mean, that's all understandable.”
For nearly 30 years, Wilson has traveled past Snoopy on her way into the mountains.
Take him away and there would be a conspicuous blank spot in her mental map of the mountains.
“I would be lost,” she said. “It is a landmark for me when I'm hunting. I would be so lost.”
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
