Stories Etched in Stone

Troy Scotter has a vivid memory of the first time he saw rock art up close. Soon after he moved from Alberta, Canada, to attend Brigham Young University in Utah, he tagged along with a roommate on a trip to Goblin Valley State Park. But when they arrived at the campground late Friday night, they were turned away.

“The guy just laughed at us,” Scotter recalled. “It was the spring, and he said, ‘We’ve been full for three days!’ ”

Scotter and his companion drove off on the dirt roads that traverse the desert surrounding the park, looking for another place to crash. Much of the area is overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, and at the time – it was the early ’90s – it was wide open to dispersed camping. (Because southern Utah is increasingly popular, the bureau now restricts camping in many high-use areas to protect the landscape.)

It was getting late, and it was dark and quiet out in the red rock desert.

Finally, they saw a little two-track leaving the road that led to a nice, flat spot. They flopped down their camping gear and went to sleep. When Scotter woke up in daylight, it was to the sight of large, painted red figures looming on the rock face above him – a Barrier Canyon style rock art site. Archaeologists attribute this style to the Archaic people, who lived in the area between 8,000 BC and 500 AD.

“I just thought, ‘Holy smokes!’ I’d never seen anything like that before,” Scotter said. He’d seen petroglyphs – images carved or pecked into rock – in Canada, and knew a little about rock art, but he’d never before seen anything as impressive as the site he and his roommate had stumbled upon in the dark.

“It was stunning,” Scotter said.

That experience sparked a decades-long fascination with Utah rock art for Scotter, and he’s not alone in his pursuit. Hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to southern Utah make stops at rock art sites: petroglyphs pecked into or pictographs painted on boulders, on canyon walls, or in alcoves all over the region.

Archaeologists have determined rough timelines of peoples who lived in Utah as far back as 12,000 B.C. and identified telltale characteristics of rock art styles associated with different cultures, but there are still a lot of unknowns.

For example, dating rock art is extremely difficult. The National Park Service administers a site called the Great Gallery, which defines the Barrier Canyon style, known for an emphasis on anthropomorphic figures with elongated proportions, bilateral symmetry and headdresses or crowns. In 2014, researchers used a new technique called optically stimulated luminescence to try to date the Great Gallery and estimated that it was created between 900 and 2,000 years ago – significantly later than previous estimates using other techniques, which placed the panel’s creation between 2,000 and 8,000 years ago.

The mysteries associated with rock art may be part of the allure for so many visitors, enthusiasts and researchers. That, along with the weight of history and the beauty of the sites themselves, makes rock art irresistible for some.

“It’s the same thing with going to Rome,” Scotter said. “It’s nice to see a picture of the Sistine Chapel, but it’s a different feeling than being in the Sistine Chapel and looking up at the walls and the ceiling.”

After his first face-to-face encounter with the rock art of southern Utah, Scotter was keen to learn more. While visiting the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, he stopped at an outpost general store and found Kenneth Castleton’s Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Utah, a guide that describes sites and the history of Native cultures in Utah.

Scotter bought a copy and started poring over it, he said. Around then he also found the Utah Rock Art Research Association, or URARA.

The group formed organically in the ’80s as a small social circle who met up to look for rock art sites. As it grew, it became more formal; by the time Scotter joined in the ’90s, it had its official name and hosted regular field trips to rock art sites for its members.

On his first trip with URARA, Scotter was excited to dive deeper into his hobby, learning from experts and exchanging ideas with others, but he was also intimidated – he thought he might be the only member without a degree in archaeology. He strategized to arrive at the group’s campsite late in the evening, so he could sneak in unnoticed. To his surprise, when he drove in around 10 p.m., he found everyone awake and enjoying a casual social hour with a backyard barbecue vibe.

“There was a truck with buckets of KFC; everyone was just hanging out,” Scotter said. “They were so excited to have someone new come.” No one on the trip had an archaeology degree. He got ribbed about the Volvo he was driving – everyone else had trucks capable of handling the rugged terrain of Utah’s backcountry – but he felt welcome. Years later, he served as the group’s president; currently he’s the URARA webmaster.

The group has more than 500 members from both within and outside the state. Its three areas of focus are education on the history of rock art and Native cultures in Utah; conservation/preservation of rock art and archaeological sites; and activities like field trips and symposiums for members.

The group first started to get more serious about conservation when members saw a threat to archaeology sites in Nine Mile Canyon, an area in central Utah dense with rock art panels. In the mid-’90s, oil and gas companies started exploring the potential for drilling wells in the area.

“The group opposed it, and it set us off on a whole different course,” Scotter said. “We had to learn a lot of things to become advocates.”

In a departure from studying rock art, group members started researching government processes, acronyms and laws. They got help from professional archaeologists who could point them toward the most effective methods to protect the sites, by identifying specific language and when and how to engage in federal agencies’ official evaluation processes.

When another potential oil and gas drilling project was proposed – this time on the Tavaputs Plateau – federal agencies recognized URARA’s expertise in rock art sites and invited the group to participate and help identify critical archaeological sites for protection.

Conservation and preservation doesn’t only mean slogging through legalese and government procedures. URARA members also help agencies in the field with things like placing signs, maintaining trails and documenting sites. Recently at a site in the Indian Creek area, which is part of the new Bears Ears National Monument, URARA members spotted images on a rock art panel that had never been documented before.

Discovering undocumented figures is a thrilling moment for a rock art enthusiast, but one doesn’t have to venture to remote places to marvel at rock art. Some of the best sites – the most impressive and varied – are accessible by car with short trails and interpretive signs that point out the most interesting features. Scotter highly recommends the Sego Canyon site near Thompson Springs.

“If people ask, ‘What’s the one site I should go to in Utah?’ I always say Sego,” Scotter said. “It’s an absolutely fantastic series of panels.”

Three cultures are represented there: Barrier Canyon, Fremont and Ute. Some of the Fremont images are superimposed on top of some of the Barrier Canyon panels, a circumstance that helps researchers to date rock art and, Scotter said, is fascinating to see. The Fremont culture is thought to have occupied Utah between A.D. 200 and 1300. Fremont-style rock art varies widely across geographic regions, but generally Fremont anthropomorphs have trapezoidal bodies, rectangular heads and decorative necklaces and sashes.

Ute rock art is recognizable by the inclusion of items brought to North America by European explorers. Ute people, who continue to live in southern Utah today, occupied the area when Spanish explorers arrived, bringing horses and guns; the mobility allowed by horses also brought Ute tribes into greater contact with Plains cultures, where they developed an interest in bison. Images of bison, horses and/or guns indicate that the panel is from this later culture. Ute and other Native American tribes still thrive in Utah and the Four Corners region. Many of these tribes maintain strong connections to rock art sites. In a 2017 paper about Utah rock art, Scotter and his co-author, Nina Bowen, quote a Paiute elder who described rock art panels as “learning rocks.”

URARA is striving to build stronger connections with tribes: They created a board position tasked with developing relationships with Native communities. At their fall symposium in Vernal, a combination of professional archaeologists, academics, amateur enthusiasts and URARA members gave presentations; one presentation was from a Ute speaker.

In addition to the symposium, members can join monthly field trips to rock art sites – usually sites that are well-known and managed for visitation, with established trails – both to learn about the sites and enjoy each other’s company. The group also offers lesson plans for teachers; sometimes members visit grade-school history classes to give lectures.

URARA welcomes new members. People can sign up through the website, urara.wildapricot.org. Signature on a list of site-visit ethics, outlining respectful behaviors to follow and damaging behaviors to avoid, is mandatory.

“Otherwise, we’re pretty much the cheapest date in town,” Scotter said. There’s a $25 membership fee.

This fall, URARA members are helping to survey areas around Vernal that could be impacted by a proposed fracking operation. Some of the properties have never been surveyed for rock art, and Scotter said there’s a high potential for undocumented panels to be recorded, based on what’s known about habitation in the surrounding areas. Participants in the survey are contributing to the preservation of a precious cultural resource, and they may also get a chance to experience the wonder of discovery.