Part 2

Prehistoric people

There is abundant evidence that the canyon lands were inhabited by cliff dwellers centuries before the explorations of Powell or the earlier visits of the Spanish explorers and the fur trappers. Projectile points and other artifacts found in the nearby La Sal and Abajo Mountains indicate occupation by aborigines from about 3,000-2,000 B.C. to about 1 A.D. (Hunt, 1956).

Archeologists have found evidence of two occupations by prehistoric peoples in and near Canyonlands National Park—the Fremont people around 850 or 900 A.D. and the Pueblo or Anasazi people from about 1075 to their departure in the late 12th century (Jennings, 1970). Within the park, the most densely populated area was along Salt Canyon and its tributaries in the Needles district, but many prehistoric dwellings and granaries are also found just south of the park in Beef Basin and Ruin Park.

The Fremont people, who were mainly hunters, seemingly left no artifacts, but they did leave beautiful pictographs, or rock paintings, such as the group of ghostly human figures on the sandstone wall of Horseshoe Canyon (fig. 2), in the detached unit northwest of the park proper (fig. 1). The All American Man (fig. 3), a most unusual “Humpty Dumpty” figure painted in red, white, and blue on the wall of a cave about 3⅓ miles above the cable across the east fork of Salt Canyon, is believed to have been done in the Fremont style, but as shown in the photograph, it is next to one of three dwellings in the same cave that were built later by the Anasazi people. Tower Ruin (fig. 4) is one of many well-preserved granaries built by the Anasazi, who farmed the flood plains of creeks such as Salt and Horse Canyons. According to Jennings (1970),

There is some evidence that these early Utah people practiced a form of irrigation, using shallow ditches to carry water to their crops. There is also evidence that a change in climate sometime around the late 12th century brought about summer flash flooding and induced the cliff dwellers to abandon their Canyonlands homes and farms.

Visitors to the Needles district pass through Indian Creek State Park 12 miles west of U.S. Highway 163. The principal attraction, which is visible at the base of the Wingate Sandstone cliff on the right (north), is Newspaper Rock (fig. 5), one of the best preserved and most intriguing petroglyphs, or rock inscriptions, in the canyon lands. Many of the older cliff faces of the Wingate and Navajo Sandstones are darkened or blackened by desert varnish, a natural pigment of iron and manganese oxides. The prehistoric inhabitants of the canyon country learned that effective and enduring designs could be created simply by chiseling through the thin dark layer to reveal the buff or tan sandstone beneath. According to Jesse D. Jennings (letter of Mar. 20, 1962, to Utah Div. Parks and Recreation),

There are at least three periods of workmanship visible on the rock. The last is quite recent since it shows men mounted on horses [brought in by Spanish explorers]. These are probably less than 200 years old and are probably the work of Ute tribesmen. The others cannot be identified with any specific cultural group, although the earliest may be as much as one thousand years old and are probably the work of the so-called “Fremont” peoples * * *

In addition to the designs by the Fremont, Anasazi, and Ute artists, you will note a few names and dates as late as 1954.

Late arrivals

The modern history of Canyonlands is as colorful as the canyons themselves, and involves Indians, cattlemen, bank robbers, cattle rustlers, and horsethieves, followed by oil drillers, uranium hunters, potash miners, jeepsters, boaters, and tourists. A brief summary of their activities is taken mainly from a recent account by Maxine Newell (1970), to whose work you are referred for further details.

Bands of Ute and Navajo Indians roamed the canyons and mesas until the late 1800’s, but gradually they were driven out and succeeded by pioneer cattlemen, the first of whom were George and Silas Green in 1874-75, followed by the Taylor brothers in 1880-81. Cowboys named many of the natural features of the area, and the Needles country provided the scenic background for some of Zane Grey’s western tales and for David Lavender’s “One Man’s West.” Lavender Canyon, whose headwaters were recently annexed to the park, was named for him. Visitors to the Needles district pass the Dugout Ranch about 7 miles northwest of Newspaper Rock. The earliest ranch dwellings were dirt houses built by the Somerville and Scorup brothers, who bought the huge Indian Creek spread for $426,000 from the Carlisle Co. in 1918. In 1973 the ranch was operated by Robert and Heidi Redd, whose line camp at Cave Spring served as temporary park headquarters and later was restored to a typical line camp (fig. 6) as part of the Cave Spring Environmental Trail.

Robbers Roost Canyon and Spring some 30 miles west of the park was the hangout of a horsethief named Cap Brown in the seventies. From 1884 until about 1900 it was the hiding place for the notorious Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch, who robbed banks, trains, and mine payrolls and stole or traded horses and cattle from the ranchers. Cassidy and his gang managed to get along with the cattlemen by either replacing or paying for most of the horses and cattle, but the law finally drove them out, and Butch, the Sundance Kid, and a woman named Etta Place moved to Bolivia. According to the movie version, Butch and the Sundance Kid were hunted down and shot by Bolivian soldiers for robbing banks and mine payrolls, but according to Baker (1971) Butch returned safely to the United States and died in the Northwest in 1943 or 1944, and the Sundance Kid is reported to have died in Casper, Wyo., in 1958 at age 98. Art Ekker (Findley, 1971, fig. 3), present owner of Robbers Roost Ranch, which contains the former hangout, commented: “A lot of people are sure that Butch and his gang buried some money around Robbers Roost. Every so often somebody turns up with a map or a metal detector and wants to start digging. They’ve found a lot of rusty tin cans and old horseshoes.”

The uranium boom of the 1950’s, touched off by Charlie Steen’s fabulous Mi Vida mine south of La Sal, Utah, temporarily skyrocketed the population of Moab and sent uranium hunters into every nook and cranny of the canyon lands. Many of the jeep trails were first made then, and landing strips and prospect holes of that period are plentiful. Most of the prospects were in the Chinle Formation, particularly in the Moss Back Member at the base, but some were in rocks older than the Chinle, and some were in younger rocks. The uranium mines in the park are no longer operating, but production has been resumed in a few mines just north and east of the park. Information on some of these mines, obtained from E. P. Beroni (U.S. Atomic Energy Comm., oral commun., Feb. 14, 1973) is given at appropriate places below.

The number of boaters or floaters on the Colorado and Green Rivers is increasing steadily, and trips by jet boat and other power boats are available from Moab. Tourist travel over good roads on Island in the Sky and Hatch Point and by paved road to The Needles also is increasing steadily. Travel west of the Green River and main stem of the Colorado River is still restricted largely to a few jeep trails and to hiking or horseback riding.

Geographic Setting

Geologists have divided the United States into many provinces, each of which has distinctive geologic and topographic characteristics that set it apart from the others. One of the most intriguing and scenic of these is the Colorado Plateaus province, referred to in this report simply as the Colorado Plateau, or the Plateau. This province, which covers some 150,000 square miles and is not all plateaus, as we shall see, extends from Rifle, Colo., at the northeast to a little beyond Flagstaff, Ariz., at the southwest and from Cedar City, Utah, at the west nearly to Albuquerque, N. Mex., at the southeast. Canyonlands National Park appropriately occupies the heart of the Canyon Lands section, one of the six subdivisions of the Plateau. As the names imply, the Canyon Lands section of the Plateau comprises a high plateau, generally ranging in altitude from 5,000 to 7,000 feet, which has been intricately dissected by literally thousands of canyons.

Canyonlands National Park is drained entirely by the Colorado and Green Rivers, whose confluence is an important and scenic central feature of the park (figs. 59, 60). Individual canyons traversed or drained by these rivers are discussed in later chapters.

When Major Powell reached the confluence in 1869, the river flowing in from the northeast to join the Green River was called the Grand River, and the Green and Grand joined there to form the Colorado River. The Grand River was renamed Colorado River by act of the Colorado State Legislature approved March 24, 1921, and by act of Congress approved July 25, 1921. But the old term still remains in names such as Grand County, Colo., the headwaters region; Grand Valley, a town 16 miles west of Rifle, Colo.; Grand Valley between Palisade and Mack, Colo.; Grand Mesa, which towers more than a mile above the Grand and Gunnison River valleys; Grand Junction, Colo., a city appropriately located at the confluence of the Grand and Gunnison Rivers; Grand County, Utah, which the river traverses after entering Utah; and Grand View Point, the southern terminus of Island in the Sky.

When viewed at a distance of 1 foot, the shaded relief map (fig. 1) shows the general shape of the land surface in and near Canyonlands National Park to the same horizontal scale as it would appear to a person in a spacecraft flying at a height of 250,000 feet, or about 48 miles. This map was prepared by artist John R. Stacy from parts of the reverse sides of four plastic relief maps—Salina, Moab, Cortez, and Escalante quadrangles, at a scale of 1:250,000—using a simple time- and money-saving method he devised (Stacy, 1962).

An image of Canyonlands National Park and vicinity from a satellite at a height of about 570 miles is shown in figure 7. Note white clouds and black cloud shadows on right.

Rocks and Landforms

The vivid and varied colors of the bare rocks and the fantastic canyons, buttes, spires, columns, alcoves, caves, arches, and other erosional forms of the canyon country result from a fortuitous combination of geologic and climatic circumstances and events unequaled in most other parts of the world.

First among these events was the piling up, layer upon layer, of thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks under a wide variety of environments. Sedimentary rocks of the region are composed of particles ranging in size from clay and silt through sand and gravel carried to their resting places by moving water, silt and sand particles transported by wind, and some materials precipitated from water solutions, such as limestone (calcium carbonate), dolomite (calcium and magnesium carbonate), gypsum (calcium sulfate with some water), anhydrite (calcium sulfate alone), common salt (sodium chloride), potash minerals such as potassium chloride, and a few other less common types. Some of the materials were laid down in shallow seas that once covered the area (fig. 8) or in lagoons and estuaries near the sea. Some beds were deposited by streams in inland basins or plains, a few were deposited in lakes, and some, like the Navajo Sandstone, were carried in by the wind. The character and thickness of the sedimentary rocks, and the names and ages assigned to them by geologists, are shown in the rock column in figure 9 and in the cross sections in figures 10 and 15, and the history of their deposition is discussed in the chapter “Summary of Geologic History.” The rock column was compiled mainly from generalized stratigraphic sections given by Baker (1933, 1946), McKnight (1940), Hinrichs and others (1967, 1971b), and F. A. McKeown and P. P. Orkild (U.S. Geol. Survey, unpub. data, Mar. 16, 1973).

Not exposed in the area but present far beneath the sedimentary cover, and exposed in a few surrounding places, are examples of the other two principal types of rocks: (1) igneous rocks, solidified from molten rock forced into or above younger rocks along cracks, joints, and faults and (2) much older metamorphic rocks, formed from other pre-existing rock types by great heat and pressure at extreme depths. The particles comprising the sedimentary rocks were derived by weathering and erosion of rocks of all three types in the headwater regions of the ancestral Colorado River basin. Igneous rocks of Tertiary Age (fig. 80) form the nearby La Sal, Abajo, and Henry Mountains (fig. 7).

Second among the main events leading to the formation of the canyon country was the raising and buckling of the Plateau by earth forces so that it could be vigorously attacked by various forces of erosion and so that the rock materials thus pried loose or dissolved could eventually be carted away to the Gulf of California by the ancestral Colorado River. Some idea of the enormous volume of rock thus removed is apparent when you look down some 2,000 feet to the river from any of the high overlooks, such as Dead Horse Point (fig. 15) or Green River Overlook (fig. 23), or when you lay a straightedge across the three high mesas in figure 10 and note the large volume of missing rocks below. Not so apparent, however, is the fact that some 10,000 feet of younger Mesozoic and Tertiary rocks that once overlay this high plateau also has been swept away. In all, the river has carried thousands of cubic miles of sediment to the sea and is still actively at work on this gigantic earthmoving project. In an earlier report (Lohman, 1965, p. 42) I estimated that the rate of removal may have been as great as about 3 cubic miles each century. For a few years the bulk of it was dumped into Lake Mead, but now Lake Powell is getting much of it. When these and other reservoirs ultimately become filled with sediment, for reservoirs and lakes are but temporary things, the Gulf of California will again become the burial ground.

AGE (millions of yrs ago) GEOLOGIC AGE NAME OF ROCK FORMATION KIND OF ROCK AND HOW IT IS SCULPTURED BY EROSION THICKNESS (feet) NAMED FOR OCCURRENCE AT OR NEAR

150 Jurassic Entrada Sandstone Crossbedded white fine-grained sandstone at top (Moab Member); salmon colored to pink, fine-grained, generally crossbedded sandstone in middle (Slick Rock Member); red earthy sandstone and siltstone at base (Dewey Bridge Member, grades into Carmel Formation west of Green River). Forms steep-sided buttes north, east, and west of park. 400-500 Entrada Point, San Rafael Swell, Utah 175 Jurassic & Triassic(?) Glen Can Group Navajo Sandstone Crossbedded buff to gray sandstone, some red sandstone, and thin beds of limestone. Residual rounded patches on highest mesas. 325-550 Navajo Country, Ariz., New Mexico, Utah Late Triassic(?) Kayenta Formation Irregularly bedded stream-laid gray, buff, lavender and red fine-to-coarse-grained sandstone and siltstone. Caps most high mesas and forms tops of highest cliffs. Contains fresh-water fossils. 160-300 Glen Canyon, S. Utah, Kayenta, Arizona 200 Late Triassic Wingate Sandstone Buff and light red generally crossbedded medium-grained sandstone. Forms highest cliffs, many of which are coated with black desert varnish. 210-340 Ft. Wingate, New Mexico Chinle Fm. Unnamed upper member Reddish siltstone, mudstone, and sandstone locally bleached to bluish or greenish gray, and few thin beds of limestone. Forms steep slopes at base of highest cliffs. Contains some fossil wood and reptile bones. 205-740 Chinle Valley, Ariz. Moss Back Mbr Gray, brown, and gray-green sandstone and conglomerate. 0-80 Moss Back Ridge, Utah 215 Middle(?) and Early Triassic Moenkopi Fm. Unnamed upper member Brick red, reddish-brown, and brown mudstone and sandstone, and some conglomerate and gypsum. Forms slopes broken by thin ledges. 250-940 Moenkopi Wash, Ariz. Triassic(?) Hoskinnini Tongue Pale-brown fine-to-coarse-grained sandstone; forms ledges. 0-120 Hoskinnini Mesa, Ariz. 250 Permian Cutler Fm. Undivided Cutler Formation in northeastern part of area is composed of buff, red, and purple arkosic sandstone and conglomerate. South of Indian Creek is the thick Cedar Mesa Sandstone Member, composed of massive mainly crossbedded white to pale red sandstone with thin beds of cherty limestone. Forms needles, arches and other erosional features. Thickening southwestward is the White Rim Sandstone Member of white crossbedded sandstone. 800-1,000 Cutler Creek, Colo. White Rim Sandstone Member White Rim, Wayne Co., Utah Organ Rock Tongue Organ Rock, Utah Cedar Mesa Sandstone Member Cedar Mesa, S. E. Utah Rico Formation Buff, red, and purple arkosic sandstone and conglomerate containing several thin beds of marine fossiliferous limestone. Forms moderately steep slopes. 250-585 Rico, Colo. 300 Pennsylvanian Hermosa Formation Hermosa Creek, Animas River Valley, Colo. Unnamed upper member Blue, greenish, and gray fossiliferous limestone interbedded with white, gray, and greenish sandstone and gray to green shale. Lower part known only from deep wells. Forms steep canyon walls. 900-1,800 Paradox Member Salt, gypsum, and anhydrite with interbedded black and brown shale; some limestone. ? Paradox Valley, Colo.

Last but far from least among the factors responsible for the grandeur of the canyon country is the desert climate, which allows us to see virtually every foot of the vividly colored naked rocks and has made possible the creation and preservation of such a wide variety of fantastic sculptures. A wetter climate would have produced a far different and smoother landscape in which most of the rocks and land forms would have been hidden by vegetation. In the canyon lands the vegetation is mainly on the high mesas and on the narrow flood plains bordering the rivers, but scanty vegetation does grow on the gentle slopes or flats.