More Travels 4-Home of the Ancients

At the Home of the Ancients

Today dawned sunny but cold. It was only 50 degrees when we checked out of the motel in Moab, but weather forecasters promised warming into the 70's.
Needles Overlook, a Bureau of Land Management viewpoint of the valley, gave us spectacular vistas of the Colorado River valley and the Needles formations of Canyonlands.
"It's out in nowhere. We'll have it all to ourselves," said Andy, as we drove the lonely 22-mile road in.

Needles Overlook, an extensive overlook maintained by the
Bureau of Land Management, allows visitors a panoramic
view of the Colorado River basin.

At least ten cars were already in the parking lot. We spent a leisurely 45 minutes climbing around the overlook and gazing from Six Shooter Viewpoint and Colorado River Viewpoint."Sure glad I wasn't the guy who drilled the holes in the rock for those fence posts," said Andy.
I swallowed hard just looking at them.  The fence lined the very edge of the sandstone cliff. In the distance the Needles rose in sharp pinnacles. Cedar Mesa sandstone, these formations were laid down 225 million years ago from a coastal sand dune layer. Eroded over time by water, the loose sand and salt deposits washed away, leaving deep red spires. Nature was a magnificent artist here.

Posing at Colorado Viewpoint
of Needles Overlook is chilly
on the first full day of fall.

Today is the first full day of fall. Driving back toward Route 191 from Needles Overlook at Canyon Rim Recreation area, 6,295 feet, Andy noticed white on the tops of the La Sal Mountains. With yesterday's rain storm and last night's drop in temperature, eastern Utah had had its first snow of the season. The car thermometer read 59 degrees.

Six Shooter Viewpoint at Needles Overlook shows the
Needles section of Canyonlands.

South of Bluff, Utah, we located County Road 262. "I can't believe this is a county road," said Andy. A large steel gate, latched with a chain, blocked the entrance. "Close the gate behind you," read the flier. I did. We followed the loose red dirt trail half a mile, avoiding the deepest ruts and thanking our lucky stars it was dry. Then the road deteriorated.
"That's it!" said Andy, turning around before we crossed the wash.
"We could walk," I offered. "The petroglyphs are about a half mile on the other side of the wash."
"Not way out here with everything still in the car," he replied.

Only a wire fence blocks views of the needle rock
formations at Six Shooter Viewpoint.

I hadn't thought of that.
We headed back on Route 191 to Sand Island. There an extensive rock art panel contains images from 800 to 2500 years ago. Among the San Juan figures carved into the surface of the sandstone or dessert varnish are multiple images of big horn sheep and of Kokopelli, the hump-backed flute player. The literature said he might have been an ancient "salesman" or trader who traveled from Mexico to Canada and carried trade items to and from each culture he encountered. Andy and I had never read that before. We walked a limited portion of the trail along the canyon wall. It was overgrown, rocky and prime rattlesnake territory.

At Sand Island the sandstone wall of petroglyphs
dates from 800 to 2500 years old.

Near Montezuma Creek a coyote loped across the road in front of us. He headed toward a large puddle from last night's rain and then disappeared in the brush.
Hovenweep is Paiute for "deserted valley."  The Hovenweep National Monument is actually a collection of five prehistoric ancestral Pueblo canyon head villages, constructed about 800 years ago between 1230 and 1270 A.D.  The whole area is an ancient village site on a portion of the Great Sage Plain known as Cajon Mesa.  Square Tower Unit, which we walked, is the largest section. The primitive road to Cajon, the lowest section in elevation about nine miles southwest, was rutted and not suitable for a Ford Focus.  We even tried to drive it.  Ranger Todd told us not to even try getting to outlying units called Holly, Horseshoe, Hackberry and Cutthroat Castle due to last night's rain.

Hovenweep preserves the ancient community of ancestral
Puebloans who lived along Little Ruin Canyon.

The presence of nomadic humans on Cajon Mesa has been traced back as far as 6,000 to 8,000 B.C.  But for reasons not completely understood, the more sedentary residents, who had settled down and farmed around 200 A.D., began consolidating into communities around water sources located at or near canyon heads. Tree ring dating indicates they built masonry structures of considerable skill and complexity in the mid-1200's.  By 1300, they had departed.  Their abandoned communities at Hovenweep stood undisturbed until a Mormon expedition, led by W. D. Huntington, discovered them by accident in 1854.
Prolonged drought; overuse of natural resources, like depletion of soil for growing corn, beans and squash, and removal of trees; as well as possible internal strife may have driven these ancient people from the region. They settled in what are now the pueblos of the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico and the Hopi mesas of Arizona.
Archaeology indicates these pueblo dwellers used check dams for irrigation of their small fields, solar calendars and astronomy to calculate growing seasons, and pottery, jewelry and clothing to improve their lives.

A rock arch connects the two sides of the canyon,
uniting the families of the ancient village.

We walked the two-mile Little River Trail around both sides of the canyon at Square Tower and watched the film about the Hovenweep National Monument, originally set aside in 1923.

All in ruins, the skilled craftsmanship of Hovenweep Castle,
Square Tower and Tower Point hold mysteries about the
past that will probably never be solved.

The trail took us past Stronghold House, a fortress-like structure that was entered by way of hand-and-toe holds chipped into the rock; Twin Towers, an oval and a horseshoe-shaped structure with 16 rooms; and Rimrock House, a rectangular structure with lots of peep holes. Every place we looked we could see that the builders took great pains with their stonework, each block carefully fitted and cemented in place with natural mortar. Farther along the trail the Hovenweep House was the center of one of the largest Pueblo villages in the Square Tower Group. Next were Square Tower, two stories tall with a single T-shaped doorway; Hovenweep Castle, two D-shaped towers perched on the rim of Little Ruin Canyon; an ancient check dam, to slow water in a flash flood or prevent washouts of crops planted in the canyon bottom; and Tower Point, possibly a granary with a commanding view up and down the canyon. From the end of the trail we could see Eroded Boulder House, on top of a boulder that was clinging to the wall across the canyon, and Unit Type House, a typical living and storage building with one kiva.
Beautifully maintained and delightful to walk, the Little Ruin Trail gave us a feel for life in ancient Hovenweep.
Back at the Visitor Center, Ranger Todd chatted with us about oil production in the area and the arguments on both sides over fracking.
"I understand why Blanding developed where it did," said Andy, as we drove back to town for the night.  Just like the ancients who chose the head of a canyon for the village site, Blanding is set at the base of a group of mountain peaks. "Look, Blanding has a secure water source from those mountains, that island in the sky," he added.
The residents of Blanding must have learned from the Puebloans.