Four teens live under a cliff for 10 days

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the November 29^th, 1962, issue of The Manchester Enterprise.

Four Clay County youths spent 10 days living under a cliff despite recent freezing weather because they could not get along with their parents, returned to the custody of their mother.

The four, three girls and a boy, ranging in age from 13 to 18, were arrested by the Clay County Sheriff’s Office Tuesday on a warrant issued by their mother and placed in Clay County Jail.

They were arrested at the cliff located one mile from their home at Spring Creek about seven miles east of Asher’s Fork.

Chief Deputy Sheriff J. Matt Sizemore said the mother of the four came to the Sheriff’s office Tuesday with the warrant for their arrest declaring she and their father were unable to control them and told the officers where they could be found.

Sizemore said he went to the cliff and questioned the youths on why they left home and that they told him their father and mother were continually quarrelling and they could not stay with them.

“We just decided to move out,” Sizemore quoted the oldest as saying, and that they went to the cliff to stay.

Sizemore said they were using piled up leaves and blankets they had stolen from the house as beds, were using an open fire for heat and the cliff as protection against rain.

“They had piled up wood and were using it as a wind break,” he said.  “And were eating food they would slip back to the house and get.”

“The main inconvenience they had,” the deputy said. “Was in getting water from the foot of a 200-yard hill.”

He said they carried the water in a one-half gallon jar, to their new home under the cliff.

They were returned to the custody of their mother after appearing before Judge Charles H. White.