Blevins was wrong. But the girlfriend is now his wife, so things turned out OK. He and Meredith Blevins write historical novels from their stylish stucco home, two more newcomers in a hamlet full of transplants.
"It's a town full of desert rats, river runners, archaeologists and misfits," says Blevins over lunch at the Twin Rocks Cafe, Bluff's only year-round restaurant. "People who don't fit real well in conventional society come here."
This eccentric vibe has attracted a cult of painters, sculptors, poets and other artistic types to Bluff, whose 300 residents inhabit a plain between a winding bench of sandstone cliffs and the brown, slow-moving San Juan River. Old-timers and Mormons are outnumbered, lending the unincorporated town an open, progressive flavor that's rare in rural Utah.
"New people are welcome here . . . because we're all new people, really," says Jim Hook, who moved to Bluff with his wife, Luanne, in 1988 to run the rustic Recapture Lodge. "I was here a week and they made me the fire chief."
The next year brought Steve and Georgiana Simpson, who run the Twin Rocks Trading Post. The store sells rugs, baskets and jewelry made by more than 300 Navajo artists to a steady flow of American and European tourists. Says Georgiana, "Even though we're in such an isolated place, we interact with people from all over."
Although Bluff will never be another Moab, the town is seeing new glimmers of tourism. Recent years have brought a river-rafting outfitter, a bed-and-breakfast, a coffeehouse - and an acrimonious debate about whether Bluff should forsake its septic tanks for a sewer system.
Although residents can grumble about their spartan lifestyle and at having to drive to Colorado to shop, they say Bluff offers a restorative tranquility that makes the hassles worthwhile.
"What we have are the cliffs and the beauty of this landscape and the quiet nights and the black sky full of stars," says retired geologist Gene Foushee, who moved to Bluff in 1959. "We're not here to make money. It's not a good place to do that."
