Nine Mile Canyon VIII: Redman Village

I went with Alan on the last day of February to explore some more of Nine Mile Canyon, this time hitting up Redman Village. We’d both known of its existence but we knew relatively little about what we’d find there. All I knew was that it’s on the National Register of Historic Places, and by searching online I found a single photo of the site that shows a rock wall with a window built into it. We ended up finding much more than we expected there. During the drive we made a couple of quick stops, at one of which we spotted a ruin on a ridge high above the canyon that we now plan on climbing up to on another trip.

I.B. Roberts 88 (along with several other initials, both carved and in axle grease)

Alan and the pups

Boat Rock with ruins on top–a future trip is in the works!

Natural arch high up on a ridge

We arrived at the spot along the paved road nearest to Redman Village and began hiking. After a short while we could see several ruins and we climbed up to them. The most picturesque of the ruins was the rock wall and window that I’d already seen a photo of, but my favorite ruin in the first area that we explored was a collapsed granary that still some mud holding rocks together. Some of the mud still had fingerprints from when it was first placed many hundreds of years ago.

Rock shelter at Redman Village

Metate atop a wall

Watch tower

View out of the tower

Granary

Fingerprints in the mud of a granary

Another set of ruins nearby was even more interesting. One ruin was completely intact, and to reach it required a short crawl across a ledge and then a squeeze through a small doorway. Alan and I were surprised to find some rock art near this second set of ruins. There were a lot of poorly-made petroglyphs, along with a couple of nicer ones and a handful of pictographs. The bottom of one cliff had some moki steps carved into it so that rock art could be created higher up, and one of the moki steps had a bird-like petroglyph pecked around it.

Alan checking out some ruins

Small crawl-hole into a ruin

View inside a ruin

Petroglyphs

Spiral and stairs

Petroglyph and moki step

Petroglyphs

Red and white pictographs

Enhanced white pictographs using DStretch

White figure with dots and lines

Next we explored some cliffs near Redman Village and saw one or two granaries and some more rock art, almost all of which was up high and seemingly inaccessible. I was surprised when we saw a large red pictograph in the shape of a person and outlined in white, along with two smaller white figures. Alan was the first to surmise that it’s the “red man” after which the village is named.

Ruined granary on a sketchy ledge

High, inaccessible pictograph panel

Redman, namesake of Redman Village

Horned figures below Redman

We briefly explored some more on the other side of the canyon and found more petroglyphs, then hiked back to the truck and started heading home.

Petroglyphs

Granary hidden in the cliffs

Petroglyphs

Dots

On the way home it snowed a little bit. We stopped and hiked at a couple of spots where we noticed rock art from the road, but the snow interfered with many of my photos. Our final stop was at the Housekeeper/Alger dam. It was built in the late 1890s from logs and was much more impressive before a flash flood in 2007 tore some of it apart.

Petroglyphs