Nine Mile Canyon—Past and Present Layne Miller (Presentation by Layne Miller and Clifford Rayl) Few places offer researchers more oppor- There is, however, one important factor I tunity to study rock art than Nine Mile have failed to mention. Some of the pan- Canyon. No one really knows exactly els in Nine Mile Canyon were photo- how many rock art panels are located in graphed in 1930, and those photographs its 40-mile length; however, we can get a are still available. If these are compared mouth-watering glimpse. One archaeol- to the present conditions of the panels, ogist estimated the number of cultural what can we learn? resource sites in the canyon at over 10,000. A 10-year survey being conduct- Before I get into the research conducted ed by Carbon County has surveyed about by Clifford Rayl and I, let me tell you a four miles of the canyon and has recorded little bit about the man who took these nearly 1,000 sites. The annual 10-day photographs. Leo Thorne (Figure 1) survey involves crews of up to 40 people grew up in Dry Fork Canyon near Vernal, and uses professional archaeologists and where his mother was a schoolteacher in dedicated amateurs. a small school. As a young boy he be- came fascinated with the pictographs and Those who know the canyon well indi- petroglyphs that he found adorning the cate rock art styles can be found there nearby canyon walls. That fascination from the Desert Archaic, Basketmaker, sparked a general interest in the Indians Fremont, and modern Ute cultures. Ad- who lived in the Uintah Basin, which ditionally, many freighters stopped prompted him to begin collecting arrow- alongside the road and wrote their name heads and other artifacts and thus begin using the black, sticky, axle grease that his lifelong research into their culture. lubricated their wagon’s wheels. I be- His life took a permanent turn when he lieve it can be safely said that the rock art took up photography and eventually in Nine Mile Canyon covers a period of opened the Thorne Studio in Vernal. at least 2,000 years. Some experts say Nine Mile Canyon represents an intricate “My dad loved everything about the out- record of 10,000 years of man on the of-doors,” Leo’s daughter Rhoda DeVed land. told me as we talked about her father re- cently. Rhoda and her husband, Law- If you consider the enormous number of rence, are dedicated members of the Utah sites found in Nine Mile Canyon, then Rock Art Research Association. add to the equation the numerous cultures represented there, and add in the fact that Leo became a trusted friend to the all this information is concentrated within Indians. He helped them by giving them just a few miles, then Nine Mile Canyon food during hard times, and he assisted is a fabulously valuable outdoor class- them every other way he could. That room. trust and friendship, and his interest in their history and culture, led him to doc- 113 ument, as best he could, their customs, stepped in a hole and fell on him. The lifestyle and especially the rock art he accident injured his back and made it so found on the walls of the Uintah Basin he could not do any physical work. and Nine Mile Canyon. That’s why he took up photography.” After that, Thorne never went anywhere Thorne was born on February 11, 1883 without his trusty camera. and died at the age of 83 in July of 1969. During his life, he played an important The Thornes have an interesting history part in documenting the rock art of Utah of their own. Leo’s grandfather disap- and the lives and culture of the Ute Indi- peared after his wife died of tuberculosis. ans. The purpose of this information is to He fled into the gold and silver fields of promote the important part Thorne California. His family did not know of played in documenting the rock art in his whereabouts for years, but Leo heard Nine Mile Canyon and the Uintah Basin. one day that there was a Thorne (with an He saw, photographed and recorded “e” on the end) living in the Ashley Val- many hundreds of panels before most of ley. He took his family and went there to them were vandalized in one form or an- see if it was his father. Lo and behold, to other. his surprise, it was. Thorne made at least two field trips into Rhoda’s mother was instrumental in Nine Mile Canyon with Brigham Young starting a Protestant church in Vernal, University professor, Albert Regan (Fig- which still exists today. Furthermore, she ure 2). The two probably met when helped organize a literary society that al- Reagan came into the Thorne Studio so is still functioning. In addition, her looking for a photographer to help him high standards prevented the cowboys document the rock art. Their work re- from smoking in their home, only allow- sulted in several hundred early profes- ing it in the bunkhouse. sional quality photographs of the rock art of the canyon. After seeing some of the Early rock art recorders like Thorne and photographs and realizing how important Reagan were at a real disadvantage when they are to rock art researchers today, I photographing Utah’s rock art. They ini- was forced to examine who this man was tially used sheet film that was nitrate and to find how he became interested in based. Not only was it unstable to begin the prehistoric and historic Indians of with, it gradually degraded and became Utah. potentially dangerous. Thorne’s family came into Utah when he Regan’s route through Nine Mile Canyon was just four and a half years old. He became obvious as we followed the num- played with nearby Indian children and bered photographs and retraced their grew up believing they were just like footsteps. Thorne and Regan ventured him. He realized that they possessed a down Gate Canyon, turned east in Nine culture that was disappearing and was Mile Canyon, then eventually back- little known to whites. tracked and followed the main canyon west to just below Harmon Canyon. Quoting Rhoda again, “Dad was riding a horse when he was 18, and the horse 114 Leo did not talk much about his trips into Reagan went, he left behind a legacy of Nine Mile Canyon with Reagan. He did chalked panels. The Emery County resi- not even mention it to Lawrence when dents who spearheaded the cleanup of the the two of them spent time in Nine Mile Buckhorn pictograph panel were told the Canyon, and Rhoda does not remember chalking of that fabulous panel was per- her father talking about it with the family. formed by a Brigham Young University “I do remember going into the canyon geology student by the name of Lee with my father on one trip,” said Rhoda. Stokes under the direction of professor “I remember Mrs. Nutter give me a pea- Albert Reagan. Stokes went on to be- cock feather from one of the many pea- come a famous geologist who wrote the cocks.” definitive work on the geology of Utah. Thorne did more than simply photograph Some of the sites documented by Reagan rock art. He also documented the activi- still bear the recording number he as- ties around him. His historically valuable signed to them. I know of at least three photographs show daily life in the Uintah sites in Nine Mile Canyon with his “NP” Basin and many photographs of the Ute numbers clearly visible on their face. Indians fascinated visitors to his Main Street studio for years. After visiting all but a couple of the sites for which we have photographs, Clifford His first photographs were taken in black and I discovered that nearly all show and white, the only kind available at the some kind of vandalism. Many have time. He took painstaking efforts to names and dates scrawled on them, natu- hand-color them. One of his prized pho- ral decay has taken its toll on a few, and tographs shows a large eagle painted on we found that in two places individual rocks near a firepit and Indians dressed in petroglyphs have been chiseled from the typical Native-American, buckskin cloth- cliff and are no longer there. ing gathered around. “We took the pho- tograph from inside the tent,” said Rhoda. In one case, a mystery was solved. Lo- “They, the Indians, told him to pray first, cated in the mouth of Sheep Canyon is a then take the photograph. He felt it was a date that appears to be either 1818 or privilege to take it and he never did sell a 1878 (Figure 3). Nearby are the initials copy of it to anyone because he thought it “FR.” Many debates have raged over the was something very special.” date and even the initials. An early histo- ry of the area uses it as “proof”’ that visi- Lawrence eventually met Leo and took tors have used Nine Mile Canyon since over the Thorne Studio. Needless to say, very early times, and some even pointed he met and married Rhoda, and took her out that (either accurately or inaccurately) over too. the French trapper Antoine Robidioux had a brother whose first name began Thorne deserves the same respect and with “F”. They suggested that maybe the consideration afforded other early rock brother of the famous trapper traveled art researchers and documentors. He left through Nine Mile Canyon and carved a valuable legacy that most do not know his name in the mouth of Sheep Canyon.