I spent a few days hiking and hanging out with my friend, Chris, who was back in the U.S. for the first time since last April. Because he drove to Price from northern Utah on Thursday morning we didn’t have time for a full day of hiking, so we ended up spending the rest of the day relatively close in the Dutch Flat area. First on the agenda was to try locating some rock art in a wash that a friend had long ago told me about. I didn’t know what kind of rock art, or how good it was, or even where exactly in this shallow canyon it was located. We just parked as close as we could and started hiking downstream, and at first there weren’t even any possible surfaces for rock art. As the canyon grew slightly deeper we started to see small outcroppings of sandstone, and at the first one there was a broken part of an old stove, so there was probably some sort of cowboy camp here long ago. A few minutes later we found two dead dogs that appeared as though they’d been shot. 🙁 Farther down as the sandstone ledges became more numerous we did find some very faded wavy line pictographs. There were some rock walls along the rim that were probably for keeping livestock within the confines of the canyon.
First sandstone outcropping we encountered
Part of an old stove
Cliffs ahead
Flat caprock above a possible pit structure
Overhang with pictographs
Very faded pictographs
Rock wall on the canyon rim
Above the rock wall
We reached the mouth of the canyon without finding any more rock art. I wasn’t satisfied with what we’d found and remembered there was some excellent rock art about a mile away that I’d already been to but Chris had not. It’d been 13 years since I was there and I had very little recollection of where the first set of petroglyphs was. They’re mostly sandal petroglyphs on horizontal surfaces, which might have been difficult to find without a GPS but luckily we ran right into them. We continued on toward the next set of rock art panels and on the way, below us in the creek, was a piece of ice caught up in an eddy. It had turned into a nearly perfect circle from slowly spinning in the same place for so long.
This petroglyph reminds me of an aardvark or armadillo
Sandal petroglyphs
Sandal petroglyphs
Sandal petroglyphs and a wavy line
Standing above the creek
Circle of ice spinning below
Ice circle
United States Tobacco Co. can lid
We descended to the creek and visited several more panels, mostly pictographs or a mix of both pictographs and petroglyphs. The creek was still and mostly frozen over, but we heard something splashing in a small open spot under an overhang against the cliff. When we got farther downstream and saw that the water was backed up behind a beaver dam, I surmised it was probably a beaver that we’d heard earlier.
Pictographs
Nice pictograph panel
Central figure
White handprint pictographs
Red handprint pictographs
Beaver dam
Fremont pictos
Pictographs and petroglyph
Line of chalked figures
Amazing Fremont panel
Painted petroglyphs
Red and black zig-zag
Don’t pee on or breathe near the rock art!
After climbing out of the creek we beelined back to the truck and ate a quick lunch there, then set out on foot again to go up the same canyon we’d hiked down earlier. Back when I’d noted the rock art that the friend told me about in this canyon, I noted two possible locations but now I wasn’t sure if my notes referred to the same rock art or two different panels, so Chris and I checked out the upper canyon just in case. We came across a spot where people had dumped trash off a cliff into the wash, and found a bicycle there as well as another dead dog. 🙁 At the head of the canyon, on the last possible cliffs before the wash opened up into a broad flat, we found a single small set of petroglyphs. One of the figures was pretty decent–much more interesting to me than the faded red pictos down the canyon. We exited the canyon and walked the rim back to the truck and along the way we checked out a large cow pond. It had a pretty large earthen dam with large flat stones laid out across its face. There was also a spillway that passed through a channel on one side of the dam with nicely constructed stone walls. It looked very much to me like the Civilian Conservation Corps had a hand in building the dam.
Overhang
das Rad
Finally, some patina
Petroglyph
Pecked lines
Spillway wall
Face of the dam
There was a little more time left before we had planned on being back home for dinner so we drove to see one last petroglyph panel that Chris hadn’t seen. I had even forgotten how great this panel was. It had been a pretty good day considering I hadn’t planned a detailed itinerary like I usually do. We hiked nearly nine miles total, though you can drive fairly close to most of this rock art. We returned to my house and then made plans for the following day…
A wonderful petroglyph panel
Elk and bighorn sheep
Snake figure
Wavy line figure
Photo Gallery: Dutch Flat