The Disappearance of Lynn Simmons

Summary

COLD — Bonus Episode: The Disappearance of Lynn Simmons
Host: Dave Cawley
Original Air Date: May 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this bonus episode from the "Uinta Triangle" project, host Dave Cawley revisits the mysterious disappearance of Lynn Simmons—a young man who vanished in September 1940 while working on a government survey crew in Utah's Uinta Mountains. This episode goes beyond the bare facts previously covered, delving deeply into the family’s generational struggle to remember Lynn, the painstaking process of piecing together what happened, and the powerful role of community and modern investigation in bringing lost stories back into conversation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Fade of Memory and the Drive to Remember

• Lynn’s Disappearance:
  Lynn Simmons disappeared in 1940 while working as the rear of a government survey team. A storm hit, and despite extensive searches, no trace of him was ever found.

  • “We knew that he was working on a survey project… they looked for quite a few weeks for him and just never found any trace.” — Mary Lee Peterson [02:38]

• Family Silence and Lingering Pain:
  His story faded from public record and, largely, from family conversation. His niece and nephew, Ron Luke and Mary Lee Peterson, recount growing up with fragmented stories and a clear understanding of his loss but few concrete details.

  • “Growing up, I never heard my grandparents ever talk about it. My mother talked about it… the horse came back to camp but he never did.” — Ron Luke [03:19]
  • “My grandparents really had a pain in their heart for that loss. …to have your child gone but not know anything… to live with that your whole life.” — Mary Lee Peterson [04:50]

Rediscovering Lynn through Letters and Archives

• The Treasure Trove:
  Lynn's life was rediscovered decades later when Mary Lee found a neglected box in her parents’ attic containing personal letters between Lynn and his wife, Rita. These letters painted a detailed picture of Lynn’s daily life, hardships, and love for his family.

  • “It was very like a treasure trove… information about several other people in his story… it was very emotional.” — Mary Lee Peterson [07:44]

• Collaborative Investigation:
  As Dave Cawley began his own investigation of disappearances in the Uintas, he found Mary Lee’s brief posting about Lynn online. Together, their research bridged gaps with old newspapers, correspondence with government offices, and university records, allowing the family to reconstruct Lynn’s life and disappearance in far greater detail.

  • “Piece by piece, we compiled a more complete picture of Lynn's life and loss.” — Dave Cawley [09:58]

The Search for Official Recognition

• Invisible on the Record:
  Lynn Simmons was missing not just in body, but from all missing persons databases and cold case registries—erased from official history.

  • “We realized a few years ago that there was no memorial or remembering of his life anywhere… but nothing memorializing him.” — Ron Luke [05:32]

• Establishing a Permanent Record:
  With help from the Summit County Sheriff’s office, Lynn was finally listed formally as a missing person. DNA samples were provided in hopes that, should remains surface, they could be identified and bring closure.

  • “It's a physical record that he did go missing, that he's never been found… that he be remembered.” — Ron Luke [15:22]

Emotional Closure and The Meaning of Remembrance

• Returning to the Uintas:
  In September 2024, on the 84th anniversary of Lynn’s disappearance, Dave accompanied Lynn’s family to the area near where Lynn was last seen, adding new context and collective memory to family lore.

  • “It provided us a clear view of La Motte Peak, where Lynn was last seen. Finally, those old campfire stories gained new context.” — Dave Cawley [15:41]

• A Family's Gratitude:
  The family expressed deep appreciation for Dave's role in bringing Lynn’s memory back to the conversation—with Mary Lee and Ron attributing the breakthrough to a kind of providence or miracle.

  • “It seemed like an incredible favor, like an incredible miracle that you would have been interested in that story and how it all came together.” — Mary Lee Peterson [16:16]
  • “We feel like it's a miracle, really, that you were drawn to our story.” — Mary Lee Peterson [16:58]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “My mother was only 14 years old and her brother was 20… they did a lot of searching, but they weren’t talkers. They were very quiet people that didn’t talk much.” — Mary Lee Peterson [03:32]
• “I would dream about it. I had many dreams about… trying to understand what I was looking at.” — Mary Lee Peterson on her intense research [10:13]
• “He was a hard, hard worker… that he did to support his family. And I think that's one more notch to add to our memories.” — Mary Lee Peterson [10:47]
• “Those phone lines Ron mentioned are an intriguing piece to the mystery… the Summit county sheriff… was never able to confirm whether Lynn made that call.” — Dave Cawley [11:38]
• “I just really felt like he needed to be remembered and not lost.” — Mary Lee Peterson [05:56]

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Timeline of Key Segments

• 00:28 — Dave Cawley previews the episode and introduces Lynn Simmons' disappearance.
• 01:41 — Family connections: Ron Luke and Mary Lee Peterson introduced, sharing earliest memories and family lore.
• 02:38–05:32 — The family's incomplete and painful memories of Lynn’s vanishing.
• 06:14 — Discovery of the box of letters and the emotional impact on the family.
• 07:09 — Dave describes Lynn’s family dynamics and letter insights.
• 09:33 — Dave and Mary Lee begin collaborating; exchange newspaper archives and letters.
• 10:13–11:26 — The feverish process of research and piecing together Lynn’s life.
• 11:38 — Mention of old Forest Service phone lines and the mysterious phone call after Lynn’s disappearance.
• 15:02 — Formal push to get Lynn on the missing persons registry and secure a historical record.
• 15:41 — 84th anniversary family return trip to the site of the disappearance.
• 16:16–16:58 — Family expresses gratitude for Dave’s role and the "miracle" of remembrance.

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Themes & Tone

• Tone: Quietly emotional, respectful, resilient—a blend of investigative curiosity and deep family feeling.
• Themes: The persistence of family memory; the invisibility of the forgotten; reverence for the past; the long, collaborative work needed to recover lost stories; and the small but profound closure that comes with being recognized and remembered.

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Episode Takeaway

This episode of "Cold" is less a procedural investigation than an eloquent meditation on memory and loss—showing how even after decades, bringing a missing person’s story back to the surface can transform families, reshape histories, and provide a measure of enduring justice through remembrance.

Transcript

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[Dave Cawley]

it done hey, it's Dave Cawley. It's been a bit quiet around the Cold podcast feed lately, but I want to let you know a new season is in the works. The story is pretty wild. It involves somebody going to prison as a direct result of this show. I'll have more to share on that front in a few months. Meantime, the series I shared last year, Uinta Triangle, is available to binge. It's nine episodes, the perfect length if you have a summer road trip ahead. The KOLD team also produced nine bonus episodes for Uinta Triangle, which previously required a paid subscription, but no more. I'm dropping my three favorite Uinta Triangle bonus episodes here in the cold feed. You can find the rest by following Uinta Triangle for free on its own feed. Just search for Uinta Triangle. That's Uinta Triangle wherever you listen. Thanks as always for the support and for listening. I'm Dave Colley and this is a bonus episode of Uinta Triangle. In episode three, you heard the story of Lynn Simmons, the young man who disappeared while working on a government survey crew in September of 1940.

[Ron Luke]

Boy, this country up here is nothing

[Dave Cawley]

but one cliff after another. You may not remember the details because it went by pretty fast in the episode. That's okay. Here we're going to talk about the story behind the story, how even the very memory of Lyn was almost lost to history. My original concept for this show was quite different from what it became. Years ago. I pitched the idea of doing a case per episode series covering as many stories of missing people in the Uinta Mountains as I could find. That raised a just how many people are there who have disappeared in the Uintas over the years? I started digging into old newspaper archives, trying to come up with an answer. And that's how I first came across the name Lynn Simmons. But when I looked for Lynn on missing persons databases or cold case registries, I came up empty. Turns out the same was true for Lynn'

[Mary Lee Peterson]

we knew that he was working on a project on a survey project. We knew that he was with a team of people and the storm started and he didn't ever come back to the camp. He was at the end, he was behind the group. They looked for quite a few weeks for him and just never found any trace.

[Dave Cawley]

That's Mary Lee Peterson. Mary Lee and her brother Ron Luke are related to Lynn through their mother.

[Ron Luke]

So Lynn Simmons was my mother's brother. Lynn was lost when my mother was a teenager.

[Dave Cawley]

Ron and Mary Lee never knew Lynn themselves. He disappeared before they were born. And they only heard the story of his disappearance vaguely.

[Ron Luke]

Growing up, I never heard my. His parents, my grandparents, ever talk about it. My mother talked about it. A detail I always heard her talk about was the horse came back to camp, but he never did.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

And my mother was only 14 years old and her brother was 20. And so he knew exactly because he came up and searched with my grandfather. They did a lot of searching, but they weren't talkers. They were very quiet people that didn't talk much.

[Ron Luke]

And we often. Every summer as I was growing up, we came up here and stayed sometimes here at Christmas Meadows, still water, Other times down lower on the other side of the. Of Bald Mountain, at different campgrounds, most regularly around the campfire at night. There was some discussion of my uncle and him being lost up here, but

[Mary Lee Peterson]

we never really knew where exactly or any other details. But our grandparents, his parents, they would be really worried when we would come camping up here because they were afraid that the same thing would happen. And they would tell my mom, don't you let any of those kids get away.

[Ron Luke]

I grew up as a young man in the scouting program, too, and came to all these scout camps. They're here in the Uintas. And again, as I sat around those campfires, I thought, well, where was it? We knew little other than that he was lost.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

My grandparents really had. They must have had a pain in their heart for that loss. And you can only imagine how hard it would be to have your child gone but not know anything or any reason why or where, and to live with that your whole life.

[Ron Luke]

And then thinking about, well, how did he die? And guessing what happened.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

So that was when we were young. But all through the years, we would always talk about it and share with other people, and they'd be surprised. So there's many of our friends and other families and whatever that know the story. And I've always been really interested in how could that happen. And that's kind of what we grew up with.

[Ron Luke]

We realized a few years ago that there was no memorial or remembering of his life anywhere. As we would go to the cemetery. There's my grandparents, there's my parents. There's my one brother who passed away, but nothing memorializing him.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

I just really felt like he needed to be remembered and not lost.

[Dave Cawley]

But how could Lynn be remembered when Ron, Mary Lee, and the rest of their family knew so little about him? Piecing the story together was a slow process played out over many years when

[Mary Lee Peterson]

my grandparents died, so that would have been in the 70s. And when my parents cleaned out their house, there was a box of, you know, papers and memory things, and my mother took it home with her to her house, and it went straight up into our attic and was forgotten. And nobody knew it was there, what was in it, or whatever. And so then when my parents died in the 2013 or whatever, and we sold their house and it was almost empty, we found that box and had it sitting around. And everyone said, no, no, I don't want it. I don't want it. So I took it and still didn't look in it very much. But the day came when I searched for, you know, through that box of information, and I started seeing letters from Lynn to Rita.

[Dave Cawley]

Rita was Lynn's wife. They had a young son, Larry. Rita and Larry lived with Lynn's parents in Salt Lake City, Utah, while Lynn was at work in the mountains. Lynn's letters described the loneliness he felt being separated from them and the wild and challenging environment in which he worked. The letters are deeply personal. Lynn and Rita talk about their relationships with friends and family, discuss the stresses of household finances, and express their love for one another. The postmarks are proof of where Lyn was at various points through the 1930s and into 1940.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

And that was very like a treasure trove. You know, I had dates, I had names, I had what he was doing day to day. I had information about, you know, several other people in his story, just other things like that. And it was very emotional to read through those letters. There was a time that I started searching through the material and putting the information together and trying to write the briefest paragraph down and putting it where, you know, other people could read it or whatever.

[Dave Cawley]

Mary Lee posted this paragraph and a brief timeline of Lynn's life on the genealogy website FamilySearch. She still didn't know the exact date her uncle vanished or from which mountain, but she mentioned her files included a letter the US Interior Secretary sent to Lynn's wife Rita in October of 1940, expressing his regrets over the failure of the search to find Lynn. Unbeknownst to Mary Lee, I was at the same time doing that research about missing people in the Uinta Mountains. I had never heard of Lynn until I came across those newspaper articles that talked about the search for him around a mountain called La Motte Peak. I knew Lamotte Peak well. I'd been to its summit and wandered off trail all around its flanks. So it surprised me. I had never heard of Lynn's case. Surely, I thought, Lynn must be included on a missing persons database. I searched and came up empty. Lynn appeared to have been forgotten. All I could find was that paragraph Marylee had posted to FamilySearch. And the mention of the Interior Secretary's letter intrigued me. What a fascinating bit of history. I sent Mary Lee an email asking if she would share that letter with me. In return, I provided all the old newspaper clippings I had gathered.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

It just started this craziness in my head, and I could not put all of this down for several months.

[Dave Cawley]

La Motte Peak, where Lynn was last seen, isn't a common destination for hikers. There are no trails to the summit and not many people visit it. But since I'd been there, I was able to share photos with Mary Lee. We started brainstorming about where else we could look for information. Mary Lee talked to the universities Lynn had attended in the years before his disappearance. I hunted down the maps and records created by the survey party. Piece by piece, we compiled a more complete picture of Lynn's life and loss.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

Every physically able moment I had, and no attending grandkids and whatever. In the middle of the night, I worked on searching, and it's feverish, you know, I would dream about it. I had many dreams about what I was, you know, trying to understand what I was looking at.

[Ron Luke]

We also had the chance to read news articles, what was published in the newspapers. And that's been wonderful, putting a whole new dimension to that story. As I learned growing up, we learned

[Mary Lee Peterson]

his character and we learned his challenges and we learned his education and, you know, his triumphs, his, you know, several different things. Lynn did the survey job to support his family, and it wasn't an easy job. It was a hard hiking. Be away from your family in the cold, in the dirt, in the mice, in your tent. You know, it wasn't fun, but he did. It was a hard, hard job that he did to support his family. And I think that's one more notch to add to our memories, is that he was a hard worker.

[Ron Luke]

We'd never heard about that. There were four service phones up here. We'd never heard about how they. There were lots of people that came to look for him.

[Dave Cawley]

Those phone lines Ron mentioned are an intriguing piece to the mystery. Back in 1940, the Forest Service had a series of guard stations scattered around the fringes of the Uintah Mountains. They were connected by a telephone cable strung from tree to tree, the newspaper stories say. On the morning after Lynn was last seen, an unidentified man used a phone connected to that line to make a call. The man asked for the time and questioned where he was. Then the call disconnected. The Summit county sheriff who was in charge of the search was never able to confirm whether Lynn made that call. That got me thinking about whether the current sheriff might have any old records. I submitted a public records request only to learn the Summit County Sheriff doesn't have anything that old.

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[Mary Lee Peterson]

We decided that one goal we had was to get him on the missing persons list and get connected with a fellow in Summit county again.

[Dave Cawley]

That's the sheriff's office with jurisdiction over Lynn's case.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

He really did go the extra mile to help us and give us information and get him on the missing persons registry.

[Ron Luke]

It's a physical record that he did go missing, that he's never been found. And it becomes part of a historical record. And that's what we as his family desire, is that he be remembered.

[Dave Cawley]

The families also provided DNA. That way, if unidentified bones are ever discovered near La Motte Peak, investigators will have a reference to compare them against. In September of 2024, around the 84 year anniversary of Lynn's disappearance, I had the honor of accompanying Mary Lee, Ron and some of Lynn's other relatives to the Uinta Mountains. We went to a spot near where that government survey party was based all those decades before. It provided us a clear view of La Motte Peak, where Lynn was last seen. Finally, those old campfire stories gained new context.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

It seemed like an incredible favor, like an incredible miracle that you would have been interested in that story and how it all came together. And I think I've said many times, we'll be forever grateful for the incredible amount of work you did and, you know, details and helping us understand, just

[Ron Luke]

gratitude for, for you, for all of the efforts that you've gone to to help us find the information and better know what happened to my uncle.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

We feel like it's a miracle, really, that you were drawn to our story and that you were, you know, willing or had the time, you know, to do all that you did in the middle of the night or whenever you did it, on top of everything else. So I don't know if you'll put any of that in there, but I want you to be sure to say something about it.

[Ron Luke]

So

[Dave Cawley]

my thanks to Ron, Mary Lee and the rest of Lynn Simmons family for trusting me to play my small part. It's my hope that by Including Lynn's story in this podcast, we can all help keep Lynn's memory alive. This bonus episode was produced by me, Dave. Our executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittleswax for Lemonada Media and Cheryl Worsley for KSL Podcasts. For more on the story of Uinta Triangle, visit our [e-mail] that's uinta spelled uinta. Thank you for listening.

[Mary Lee Peterson]

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[Ron Luke]

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[Ron Luke]

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[Dave Cawley]

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[Dave Cawley]

Mom, can you tell me a story?

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[Mary Lee Peterson]

Was she brave?

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[Mary Lee Peterson]

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[Mary Lee Peterson]

Was it scary?

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[Mary Lee Peterson]

Did the car have a sunroof?

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[Dave Cawley]

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