A storied byway links some of the Southwest’s most revered landscapes, many of which are dramatically carved by nature from scarlet sandstone and are easily recognizable from Hollywood’s silver-screen spotlight. Others are ancient human dwellings perched precariously in secretive canyons requiring more effort to see as they subtly blend into the environment.

The Trail of the Ancients is a National Scenic Byway crossing the Four Corners region and is lined with the archaeological heritage of the Ancestral Puebloan people, formerly known as the Anasazi. Utah’s section circles 360 miles around Blanding, Bluff, Mexican Hat and other culturally and aesthetically significant sites.

Last year, we took an introductory course exploring this homeland of prehistoric peoples (the “Trail of Ancients 101,” UL, May/June 2021). Now we continue for a second course in the educational adventure. This section of the route not only visits more remnants of a vanished civilization, but also crosses Monument Valley’s mighty monoliths, the snaking San Juan River and a pioneer outpost that flourished in the desert.

 

Orientation: Natural Bridges to the San Juan River

From Natural Bridges National Monument, travelers join the byway heading south on State Highway 261. The route leads to Kane Gulch Ranger Station, serving Cedar Mesa and Bears Ears National Monument. Interpretive displays detail the region’s prehistoric sites and archaeology projects, providing an ideal orientation for exploration. A trail starting here leads into Grand Gulch, a backcountry area containing Ancestral Puebloan dwellings. The station is the only location where travelers can obtain permits to visit Moon House, a popular but remote complex of ancient structures accessed by a strenuous 3-mile hike in a canyon not suitable for the acrophobic.

As the highway veers southeast, road signs warn of upcoming hazards. Motorists see a precipice dropping into switchbacks excavated from the hillside. This is the Moki Dugway. “Moki” is an archaic term for the area’s prehistoric inhabitants, while “dugway” describes the construction method of carving the path into a cliff face. The road surface becomes gravel and twists down 10 percent grades with a speed limit of 5 mph. Driving over this feature is simultaneously a thrilling and terrifying experience. Once the road levels after a descent of 1,000 feet in 3 miles, awestruck drivers may look back at the sheer Cedar Mesa walls they scaled.

Less than 5 miles after reaching the base of the Moki Dugway, a detour on State Highway 316 leads to a glorious dead end at Goosenecks State Park. Visitors view the meandering San Juan River flowing serenely in long curves resembling the neck of a goose from an observation point 1,000 feet above. The river sliced 300 million-year-old rock into steep cliffs stratified in tightly wound pink and tawny stripes. The park, far from cities and light pollution, is an ideal place for astronomy buffs to observe plentiful twinkling stars in the night sky.

After backtracking to rejoin Highway 261, the route ends at U.S. Highway 163. At this intersection travelers can choose to turn north to Bluff or south to Mexican Hat and Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. We take the southern spur of the byway for its unrivaled natural beauty and opportunities to experience Navajo culture.

 

Midterms: Monument Valley

The strange, sombrero-like shape of Mexican Hat Rock appears from under a zig-zagging slope beside the undulating highway. Trailheads exist at the formation’s base for a closer look at the 60-foot formation with a round cap balanced on its pinnacle. Nearby, the rock’s namesake town features an assortment of inns, cafes and a gas station serving motorists and river runners navigating the San Juan.

Monument Valley’s geologic pillars appear on the horizon about 25 miles from Mexican Hat. Drivers notice the speed limit curiously dips as the road angles down an incline. The speed limit is so low because so many people stop here to take photos – it’s also why there are so many roadside pullouts. This location is famous as the spot where title hero halted his cross-country run in Forrest Gump. There always seem to be people in the road taking selfies, so motorists should be careful not to strike pedestrians standing in the highway center.

Rising from the valley floor and easily seen from the highway are signature sandstone spires like Brighams Tomb, Stagecoach and Eagle Mesa, shaped by erosion into a variety of needle-like pinnacles, natural arch windows and bulging buttes. The Oljato roundabout leads to the Navajo Welcome Center, as well as Goulding’s Lodge, founded by sheep trader Harry Goulding and his wife Leone, nicknamed “Mike.”

The Gouldings purchased land that became available when the Paiute Indian Reservation relocated in the 1920s and traded with local Navajo for handcrafted items like rugs and jewelry. After several years living and working in tents, Harry and Mike constructed a permanent building now known as Goulding’s Trading Post Museum.

When the Navajo reservation suffered during the Great Depression, the Gouldings sought new income streams and traveled to Hollywood, meeting famous director John Ford. Harry showed Ford photos of Monument Valley, convincing him it would be the perfect location for his next movie. Days later, Ford and his crew began filming Stagecoach starring John Wayne.

“So this is where God put the West,” Wayne is quoted upon first seeing the valley. Navajos worked as film extras, and Ford reportedly paid $15 a week to local medicine man Hastiin Tso to provide weather of “pretty, fluffy clouds.” A lodge and dining area the Gouldings built to accommodate movie crews has since expanded to host thousands of worldwide guests.

Navajo guides, hired at Goulding’s or through several local operators, lead tours to private properties, including Ancestral Puebloan dwellings that are otherwise closed to the public. The guides have vehicles equipped to travel the park’s sandy roads and are eager to impart firsthand knowledge about Navajo heritage. Familiar locations filmed in Western movies, such as the view of the Mittens and Merrick Butte, as well as John Ford Point, lie just south of the Utah-Arizona border and can be seen on guided or self-guided tours.

Returning north from Monument Valley, those seeking a less-visited landscape detour to Valley of the Gods. High-clearance vehicles are recommended on this unpaved 17-mile loop, which offers closeup views of red stone mesas and towers. While this valley’s formations aren’t as starkly spectacular as its southerly cousin, the diversion is a worthwhile side trip for those looking for solitude in a similar setting.

 

Graduation: Bluff

The byway continues east and crosses the jagged monocline of Comb Ridge, the rock wall also encountered between Blanding and Natural Bridges, which contains a concentration of Ancestral Puebloan communities. A site named River House is reachable by raft or four-wheel-drive vehicle from Comb Wash Road, which hooks along the San Juan River’s north shore. The Bureau of Land Management administered site features a kiva – a circular subterranean structure thought to be used for ceremonial purposes – and round, two-storied towers. Archaeologists believe the structures to be between 800 and 1,000 years old.

Rock art sites abound along Comb Ridge. A nearby dwelling called 17 Room Ruin, a partitioned structure protected by a steep alcove, is thought to have housed three or four families. Handprints painted into the rockface above the building add to the allure of this abandoned abode. Lower Butler Wash Road, which jogs north from the byway, leads to trailheads for two other notable sites: the Wolfman Panel, which includes lanky anthropomorphic figures and a puzzling face with antennae, as well as the Big Crane Panel, depicting an avian subject affectionally nicknamed “Bob” by locals.

After Highway 163 merges with U.S. Highway 191, a southerly turnoff leads to Sand Island State Park. The park’s draws are a campground, a launch for San Juan River rafters and a petroglyph panel featuring depictions of Kokopelli, a hunchbacked flute player thought to be an ancient fertility symbol, conspicuously entertaining a party of people and animals assembled in a wide scene.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints established the first Anglo community in southeastern Utah in April 1880 east of Sand Island. Around 250 people emigrated from Escalante using what they thought was a shortcut recommended by a previous scouting party. The pioneers expected a 125-mile trek that would take 6 weeks. Instead, the distance was twice as long and took more than 6 months.

In one nearly impassable spot, men spent six weeks blasting and chiseling a wagon path through a narrow, 1,200-foot drop in sandstone cliffs known as the Hole-in-the-Rock, still visible at present-day Lake Powell. The pioneers, too exhausted to continue to their planned destination 20 miles upriver, settled along a flat area in the San Juan River valley called Bluff City.

Upon visiting the settlement months later, Church official Erastus Snow advised people to build houses in a defendable fort. Bluff Fort had a unique construction: Rather than building fort walls with log cabins inside it, the cabins themselves formed the fort’s exterior walls, with all windows and doors facing inward toward an open central square.

Pioneers built up to 63 cabins in the fort, as well as other structures, including a meetinghouse and a co-op store, which sold supplies to residents and traded with the Navajo. Proceeds went to establish a prosperous cattle business. Today, free admission to the Bluff Fort Historic Site includes replicas of the co-op and meetinghouse, wagons and artifacts used on the Hole-in-the-Rock journey, a bakery and historical re-enactors.

The Navajo Twins – two towering rocks thought to represent Monster Slayer and Born for Water, the “hero twins” of tribal legend who were sent on a quest to destroy a host of murderous monsters – mark the location of Twin Rocks Trading Post. Born and raised in Bluff, owner Steve Simpson became a lawyer but returned to help his father open the trading post in 1989. “When my father was young, he saw Ute basket weavers under Sunbonnet Rock,” Simpson said, referring to another formation on the property. “He had a romantic idea of having a business here.”

The family added a cafe five years later, but the trading post specialized in basketry, turquoise jewelry and Navajo rugs. The post created the Twin Rocks Modern art style, which combines local rug weaving with work from watercolorists, including Serena Supplee of Moab, depicting landscapes like Bears Ears Buttes.

“Our mission is to take historic influences and blend them with contemporary movements,” Simpson said, “and in doing so, raise the standard of living of the artists.”

Pioneers and Navajo traders weren’t the first to occupy Bluff. The remains of an Ancestral Puebloan Great House are buried above the modern city on Cemetery Hill. Little is visible today of what was a settlement containing 20 to 40 rooms and four kivas, built during the height of Chaco culture from A.D. 1050 to 1150. Researchers question if the architects were Chaco people, whose center of power was concentrated 175 miles away in a New Mexico canyon, or by others copying Chacoan style. Bluff’s Great House was occupied until around A.D. 1250.

Beyond Bluff, the road circles back toward Blanding, where travelers can revisit favorite spots. Those moving east on other spurs find new studies of the Ancestral Puebloans at Hovenweep National Monument on the Utah-Colorado border and out-of-state parks. The byway allows visitors to attend a veritable university course to understand one of Utah’s most fabled regions and its people. Those who have earned a diploma in its lessons look forward to returning as alumni of the land of the ancients.