Closer to home conditions are mostly snowy or muddy, so this weekend I ventured farther south to the area between Hanksville and the Henry Mountains. The first place I visited was a spot with some huge petrified logs that I’d first seen photos of many, many years ago online. I knew the place was somewhere south of Hanksville, but beyond that I had no other clues until about five years ago when a friend relayed a tip he’d gotten from somebody at the rock shop in Hanksville. It wasn’t the exact location, just a general area, but that narrowed it down enough that I could actually find the petrified wood in Google Earth. The spot must be getting more well-known because the satellite imagery shows a new road leading right to it within the last eight years. There were some cows hanging out there but they didn’t seem too concerned by my presence–they just stared warily the whole time I was there.
Cows and petrified wood
Petrified wood
Petrified wood
Mount Ellen towering above Fairview Ranch
Next I poked around at Bert Avery Seep hoping to find some inscriptions, and I wasn’t disappointed. Almost all of them were made by members of the Steele family, which would be a common theme almost everywhere else I went the rest of the day.
Bert Avery Seep
1931 Ernie Steele; Holubovich
Rudy Steele 1930; Ernie Steele
Carving of a man’s head
1931 Rudy Steele
1965 Margaret Steele
Pat Steele 1965
Ivan Taft, April 27, 1912
I then visited a rock art site that had some Barrier Canyon style pictographs and some petroglyphs that I’m not quite sure of the cultural affiliation or age–maybe Archaic? The pictographs were faded and there was only one clear figure–the rest consisted of many lines and dots. The petroglyphs appeared to be of different ages, with some completely repatinated and others more recent. The largest panel was a jumble of lines with few recognizable figures.
Faded pictographs and weathered petroglyphs
Faded pictographs and weathered petroglyphs (DStretch enhanced)
Barrier Canyon style figure
Barrier Canyon style figure (DStretch enhanced)
Pictograph lines
Pictograph lines (DStretch enhanced)
Circle petroglyph
A jumbled petroglyph panel
A jumbled petroglyph panel
Circle and lines
Incised asterisks
On my way to the next rock art panel I stopped at a very small corral where I hiked around to some rock formations looking for inscriptions, but only found a couple of brands right at the corral.
Corral on Blue Valley Benches
A brand
4R brand
The next stop was small butte with petroglyphs and inscriptions all around it. There were several nice panels and even some cowboy drawings.
Petroglyph panel with a long line pecked through it
Bighorn sheep with a strange tail
Riding a bighorn
Boyd Farnsworth 1934
Coyote on the corner
Figure scratched/drilled over a petroglyph
Sam Giles, November 9, 1916
Horse and rider
Carving of a man’s head
Ernest Steele 1931
From there I could see some cliffs and rock formations in the distance that looked promising so I hiked to them, finding an arrowhead along the way. I found several more Steele inscriptions, including one from Mike Steele who also left his name at the bottom of the Flint Trail switchbacks. At one point I was trudging down a well-used cow trail and was scanning the ground ahead of me when I spotted a single chert flake. I stopped and looked around and saw many more to my left at the base of a very short cliff, and though it didn’t seem like a likely spot for rock art I saw some faint pictographs.
Ooh, a pretty rock!
Ice at a flowing spring
More cliffs to explore
Ernest Steele, March 10, 1936
October 13, 1927, Rudolph Steele; Rudy Steele, October 27, 1931; Son, Mike Steele, April 24, 1977
Very faded pictograph
Very faded pictograph (DStretch enhanced)
There were more cliffs in the area that I wanted to check out but it was faster to return to the truck and drive down the road a short distance to see them. I found more inscriptions there, including (I think) the oldest one I’d seen all day that appears to be from 1894. The name was neatly carved with small flourishes on some of the letters, and although the date appears to have been hastily carved I can’t imagine it was from the 1900s. I also saw one very small petroglyph panel and a couple of artifacts near it.
A wash with Factory Butte in the distance
Henry Mountains
W.J. McDonough, February 8, 1894
July 16, 1907, J.G.
Ernie Steele 1930
1932 Rudy Steele
Circular concretions
Small lone petroglyph panel
Horseshoe nail
Broken point
I had other things planned for the day in an area that was a bit of a longer drive away, but I didn’t think I had time for all of it so I decided to head home and save that stuff for another day when I need to get away from the cold and snow at home.
Photo Gallery: Between Hanksville and the Henrys