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The Importance of the Rock Art in Nine Mile Canyon, Utah

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The Importance of the Rock Art in Nine Mile Canyon, Utah Manning: The Importance of the Rock Art in Nine Mile Canyon, Utah Steven J. Manning THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ROCK ART IN NINE MILE CANYON, UTAH The Twenty-fifth Annual Symposium of the harm and has harmed the important prehistoric Utah Rock Art Research Association was held images that exist in Nine Mile Canyon. Dust in Price, Utah, because of the threat to the rock created by commercial vehicles traveling on the art of nearby Nine Mile Canyon. Everyone dirt roads is being deposited on petroglyphs and attending the symposium was encouraged to take pictographs making it difficult in some in- this opportunity to visit Nine Mile Canyon and stances to even see the images. Numerous con- see for themselves the adverse impacts that are struction trucks, tankers with large trailers, large occurring to the rock art in the canyon. Because gravel trucks hauling road base, drilling rigs, of this situation, I am going to focus this paper on water tankers, and other large commercial vehicles why the rock art in Nine Mile Canyon is travel up and down the unimproved dirt road in important. This paper is divided into three parts. the canyon 24 hours a day. Currently about 40 The first part is a brief discussion about the natural commercial trips are made every day over the gas explorations and extraction activities that are road in Nine Mile Canyon, which was never impacting the rock art in Nine Mile Canyon. The designed for 80,000-pound vehicles. second part is a discussion of previous research in Nine Mile Canyon for those who are not [Note 2008: The number of vehicle trips is familiar with this topic and as a foundation for expected to reach 2,853,370 over the 33-year the information that is presented in the third life of the project (WTP DEIS, Section 2.2.10), part. The third part presents examples that demon- which, for 168 new wells, would be 575 trips a strate some of the reasons why the images in Nine day. This figure represents only part of the Mile Canyon are important and why they should development of the natural gas and oil re- be preserved. This discussion cannot include all sources because this number of vehicle trips is that is known about the importance of the rock only from one major natural gas company—Bill art, it would require a book to do that, but these Barrett Corporation—and several small examples should be sufficient. In this paper I companies. Even this number is only an es- wish to emphasize the importance an individual timate. Actual vehicle trips will certainly exceed panel can have and show how much information this number; just as the actual number of ve- can be obtained from just one panel, and what hicle trips today is almost double Bill Barrett images in these panels tell us about people who Corporation’s previous estimate.] came to Nine Mile Canyon hundreds, and even thousands, of years ago. As these semi-trucks and trailers travel over the dirt road, great clouds of dust fill the canyon. The PART I dust settles on the vegetation and the rock art that lines the canyon walls. The numerous THE THREAT TO THE ROCK ART OF petroglyphs and pictographs that were created NINE MILE CANYON hundreds and even thousands of years ago are now becoming obscured by this dust (Figure 1). When Oil and principally natural gas extractions on it rains, the dust turns to mud, which flows the West Tavaputs Plateau and the adjacent down over the images impacting them even more southern rim of the Uintah Basin threatens to (Figure 2). XXV-1 Utah Rock Art, Volume XXV, 2008 Figure 1. Left: Oct. 2000. Right: Oct. 2005. Sometime after this picture was taken, the dust was removed from this and the Great Hunt panel, apparently with a pressure washer, by persons unknown. Figure 2. Petroglyph panel showing the effects of Figure 3. Part of a large newly fallen section of a road dust and rainwater, Oct. 2005. cliff face on the Nine Mile Canyon road, Oct. 2005. A pictograph panel is now missing on the cliff face above. The bright red-orange paint is to alert drivers of the now hazardous rock. The use of corrosive magnesium chloride and other chemicals which have recently been applied to the roads in an effort to control the dust, also In the fall of 2004, the National Trust for Historic ends up on the pictographs and petroglyphs as the Places designated Nine Mile Canyon as one of extremely heavy trucks eventually break up parts the “Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places in of the dirt road and churn it to powder. Pollution America.” The Carbon County Commission, the from diesel exhaust and compressor stations fouls State of Utah, and the Bureau of Land the air and adversely affects the rock art. Management have all failed to take any Vibrations from the heavy trucks are also substantive preventive measures to protect the loosening the rocks on which the rock art was prehistoric rock art of Nine Mile Canyon. Their placed, hastening the image’s total destruction. primary failure is that they did not require all Figure 3 shows part of a cliff face that once commercial vehicles to use an alternative route contained pictographs that is now lying on the past the town of Sunnyside, bypassing Nine Mile road. Canyon entirely. XXV-2 Manning: The Importance of the Rock Art in Nine Mile Canyon, Utah PART II various regions to show a consistency in the meaning of the images and therefore establish a PREVIOUS RESEARCH cultural continuity. He determined that various types of rock art located in Utah were comparable The following is a brief summary of what to that which existed in surrounding regions and researchers have understood about the rock art in he concluded that it was also created by the same Nine Mile Canyon and in Utah. This summary cultures and that it had interrelated meaning. provides a description of how the prehistoric images in Nine Mile Canyon have been studied Julian H. Steward by researchers, as well as what has been understood about the origins, cultural affiliations, Julian Steward in 1929 described a style of styles, areal distributions, currently defined petroglyphs that he identified in the western classifications, etc. of these images. This summary United States, i.e., from eastern California to the will also briefly review how various systems of Rocky Mountains of Utah (Steward 1929:220). classification were developed and demonstrate the This area, called the Great Basin, is west of Nine variety of types of rock art present in Nine Mile Mile Canyon, which is situated on the Colorado Canyon. It will also provide relevant introductory Plateau east of the Wasatch Mountain range. information for the discussions in Part III. The Steward noted that the images found in the Great developments in rock art research are arranged in Basin consist principally of curvilinear design order of occurrence. elements, such as meanders and wavy grid patterns, which often filled the entire surface of a Garrick Mallery boulder. Steward named these images the Great Basin Curvilinear Style. The style also includes Almost certainly, the earliest attempt at circles, chains of circles, spoked wheels, hand and investigating the rock art in Utah was by Garrick footprints, animal tracks, mountain sheep, simple Mallery in 1882 and 1889 (published in 1886 and human stick figures, along with “abstracts that 1893 respectively). In the late 1800s, little was defy description.” Mallery was also aware of known about Utah rock art outside of Utah this type of image (Mallery 1893: plates I–XI) (Mallery 1886:116–121). The situation in Utah but he did not suggest a name for them. Steward was entirely different. Members of the Church of attributed these panels to the Desert Archaic Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) had Culture. In Utah and Nevada, they apparently settled next to the Great Salt Lake in 1847. Two continued to be created into the Formative Period years later colonization efforts were commenced with the addition of small Fremont anthro- that led to small settlements throughout much of pomorphs. These images extend farther eastward what would later become the western United than Steward realized. States. The people who settled the Price area were soon acquainted with the rock art in Nine Mile Albert Reagan Canyon. In about 1930, Albert Reagan, a schoolteacher In about 1888, the ancient inhabitants of Utah and with the U. S. Indian Field Service who was the southwestern region of the United States were teaching in Ouray, Utah, became interested in the known as Moki Indians. Mallery’s work not only rock art in Nine Mile Canyon and in the Uintah represents the early stages of categorization, but Basin of northeastern Utah. He published several also the determination of cultural affiliation and papers in which he classified the rock art in the the distribution and meaning of rock art. Mallery Ashley and Dry Fork Valleys into a kind of attempted to correlate comparable images from cultural-history scheme (Reagan 1931, 1933a). XXV-3 Utah Rock Art, Volume XXV, 2008 His categories were Basketmaker, The Earth- Most of Reagan’s explanations for the cultural Lodge Pueblo People, People of the Round or affiliation and interpretation of rock art in Nine Circular-Bodied Drawings, and The People of the Mile Canyon have been superseded by later Head-Hunting Square-Shouldered Drawing Era. research; and although he used names for var- ious types of rock art images in Nine Mile Canyon Up to Reagan’s time the differences between the that have not stood the test of time, the temporal archaeology and rock art of eastern Utah and the sequence that he proposed for the various images surrounding areas were still little known, so is surprisingly accurate.
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