Nov 1-7 Southern Utah Petroglyphs and Pictographs

 

Our tour of Southern Utah began here at Nine Mile Canyon. The name came from a early survey but the canyon is actually much longer. The petroglyphs here cover an area of over 40 miles. It is known as the longest art gallery in the world. The oldest panels date back 5000 years to the Archaic period. Later panels are attributed to the Fremont culture from 400 to 1500. The Utes are responsible for the era late 1500s to 1800s when the natives would have had horses. And of course there is much more modern graffiti, everywhere. 

What do you think this rock is called? It is another Balanced Rock.

The owl panel

Next area is Sego Canyon where there is the above petroglyph. This area was mostly pictographs, shown below. 

This panel is in Arches National Park, along the trail to Delicate Arch.

Newspaper Rock

Near the entrance to Canyonlands National Park Needles section

The art here covers a 2000 year span. Some early European explorers left their mark as well. Look through these and note many of the hands and feet have 6 digits. Polydactyly, a condition in which individuals have a sixth digit on an extremity is quite rare. It is interesting to note that 6 digit petroglyphs are not uncommon. Archeologists excavated a nearby burial site, Pueblo Bonito and found that 3.1% of the 96 individuals had a extra toe on the right foot. 

In a cave in the Needles section of Canyonlands, these hands are on the ceiling of the rock overhang. Within the cave is a spring.

These last two pictographs are on a panel near Goblin Valley State Park.

This display was in a small museum near Torrey. Many of these points are made from petrified, jasper, agate, chert and obsidian.  

Oct 21 Injun Creek

 

Fairy Fingers

A quick hike up Injun Creek was a great way to conclude my trip to the Smokies. I wanted to find some stuff along the trail to talk about during an upcoming hike I will lead here. 

About a mile and a half up the trail, I encountered a wonderfully built rock wall along the old road. Nearby I could see other rock structures. This is the spot I have been looking for. Whomever lived here built these stone structures. I think these are piles of stones dug out of an agricultural field. Usually these piles are just haphazardly thrown together, but these built to last and be noticed. 

Faux chimney

Oct 21 Cades Cove Pearl Harbor tree

 

Having traveled around the Cades Cove loop about 30 times, I had never heard of this tree hidden in the nearby forest. 

From the experiencecadescove website is this story:

History of the Pearl Harbor Tree

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established in 1934. People were still living in the area, and they were slowly making their way out. Many of them had farms where they grew crops and tended to livestock, and the Myers family was no different. Golman Myers owned a family farm in the Cades Cove area, and he started the process of moving his farm in the 1940s to Townsend since his land was in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Myers liked keeping up with current events, mostly through listening to their battery powered RCA radio. The Myers were sitting around their radio when President Franklin D. Roosevelt interrupted the program they were listening to by announcing Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japan. Myers knew in that moment the United States was going to go to war with the rest of the world.

With the looming threat of war and his oldest sons old enough to be drafted into the war, Myers wanted a way to memorialize the soldiers who lost their lives in the Pearl Harbor attack. He went out behind his house and found a small sweet gum tree sapling, no bigger than a limb. Myers pulled up the tree from where it was growing and transplanted it out in front of his home. He then placed an old automobile rim around the sapling and said, “We will remember this forever.”

Remembering the Act

In the mid 1970s, Myers’ youngest son, Bernard, had a metal sign engraved with, “Golman Myers transplanted this tree December 7, 1941” on one side and “Pearl Harbor” on the other side. He wanted to commemorate the moment and help everyone who finds the Pearl Harbor tree in Cades Cove what it stands for. He attached the metal sign with a chain around the tree. Bernard said he just did it for his grandchildren so they could remember what their great grandfather did.

Oct 20 False Gap Prong

 

Cucumber root

Opting for a shorter hike today, I walked up False Gap Prong from the Ramsey Cascade intersection in Greenbrier. First a walk through the large cemetery here was in order, then an old road following the prong was our hike route. There was a substantial rock wall alongside bit there was only one home site in over a mile of road. So, I sent my time looking at the vegetation. 

Pretty big Hexastylis