'Let us keep our memories': 2 southern Utah farmers experience theft of 'priceless' saddles

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Two farms in Iron County report thefts of valuable equipment and saddles.
• Farmers emphasize sentimental value of stolen saddles, some linked to family history.
• Community support grows as law enforcement investigates, using Flock cameras to find suspects.

PAROWAN, Iron County — Two farms around Parowan and Paragonah are reporting a string of burglaries, and town officials are asking for the public's help.

"There's been two farms that have had a bunch stolen from them in the past few days," Paragonah Mayor Dakota Veater said in a video posted on Facebook Wednesday night.

Chuck Bentley Farm in Paragonah and Roy Adams Farm in Parowan, both of which cultivate alfalfa, had farm equipment stolen.

"They got through his locked gate (at Chuck Bentley's farm)," he said. "They kicked in a door and stole all his tack (horse equipment), saddles, all the way down to curry combs."

The mayor said that the burglar or burglars may have used the farmer's backhoe to load his fuel tank.

KSL spoke to farmers from both farms — each saying that among what was taken are "irreplaceable" saddles.

Mike Adams is a sixth-generation farmer with Roy Adams Farms, which has 1,400 acres that include alfalfa and corn. He said that he first noticed the items were missing on Tuesday morning.

"We rode our horses on Monday," Adams said. "We were gathering cows on Monday, put away our saddles, and then somewhere around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, they took our saddles."

Adams said they were just about to saddle their horses to herd cattle, and they didn't have anything to bridle them with.

"It's pretty helpless when you walk in, and you've got four missing saddles," he said. "They took the bridles and pads and blankets. They were pretty eager to get ahold of everything."

For Adams, it wasn't just that he couldn't ride his horses, but that one of the saddles taken had sentimental value because it was his grandfather's.

"My grandpa Hugh LeRoy Adams passed away in 1964 of cancer when my dad was only 11 years old," he said. "Grandpa bought two saddles for his kids, knowing that he was going to be passing away. We've been riding that saddle my entire life, and I'm 48 years old."

Adams said his parents, who own the farm, are currently serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kirkland, Ohio, and when his dad heard the saddle was stolen, he was "just in tears."

"That's the one thing about that my dad has been able to physically hold on to that he still has from his dad," Adams said. "That one hurts."

Chuck Bentley also harvests alfalfa and said he first noticed things were stolen on Wednesday. He didn't want to name all the items that were stolen, but he, too, wanted to talk about his saddles that were taken.

"One of them was my dad's," he said. "He bought it when he got out of the Navy after serving in World War 2 in 1945. "My granddaughter rode that saddle. There's one I bought for my daughter when she was 14, and another one that my granddaughter's husband bought her. I have one that I had Bob Ray make for me back in 1985. It was a custom saddle, and he's gone on to be a pretty well-known saddle maker.

"I don't care about the tools and equipment," he added. "Throw the saddles back over the fence. Let us keep our memories."

Both farmers have been working closely with law enforcement and said they have several leads, adding that Flock cameras are being used to try to locate those who may have taken the items.

Many of the additional items missing included bridles and saddle blankets, as well as some dirt bikes and four-wheelers.

Even with all that has happened, Adams said that he has been very humbled by the outpouring of support the community has given him.

"There have been 10 different people who have offered horses, saddles, tack, motorcycles, four-wheelers, side-by-sides, and it's growing by the hour," he said. "The overwhelming feeling that people are here to help, and there's good all around us — I have to keep that in the forefront of my mind. I think in a crowd of 90 or 100 people, 99 of them are good."

Bentley said that he, too, has experienced a lot of local support and is saddened that something like this has happened in his hometown.

"In southern Utah, you think you're exempt from that, but things are changing so much," Bentley said. "You're not exempt anywhere anymore."

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Iron County Sheriff's Office at 435-867-7500

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Arianne Brown

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Arianne Brown is a reporter covering southern Utah communities, with a focus on heart-warming stories and local happenings. She has been a reporter for 14 years.