V Bar V Heritage Site: Rock Art

A cairn found in Cohab Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park.

Frank and Anne's Canyon Country Hiking and Camping Notebook.

V Bar V Heritage Site

Campsite

This page contains a discussion of the rock art found within V Bar V Heritage Site. All photographs are from our our personal collection. If you'd like to see more rock art from this location, or if you'd like to see higher resolution or larger images, send us an e-mail message and we'll see what we can do.

Rock Art

The V Bar V Heritage Site was one of several pleasant surprises on our latest trip to the Flagstaff area. We had not known about the site before, and although the site is small, it contains some amazing rock art images, all petroglyphs. Covering about a forty foot wide cliff face, there are said to be about 1200 images presented here. These images were created by the Sinagua peoples and are said to be of the Beaver Creek style.

See Archaeological Site Etiquette.
See American Antiquities Act of 1906.
See Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.
Archaeological Resources Protection Act Hotline: 800-227-7286.

This image is from one of the smaller panels, to the far right of the main group. It is typical of the style and representative of the combination of anthropomorphic and graphical representations. The tall figure is something over 12 inches tall. Some say this may be a shaman while others believe it may represent a kachina figure or even the representation of a maiden, because of the apparent hair coils coming out of the head.

This is an interesting figure and cause for some speculation and conversation. From a modern perspective it looks like a hiker out on the trail with a day pack on. But it may be another version of a kokopelli figure, with a seed sack on its back. Of course we will never know, but it is fun to imagine.

This image is around the corner from the main panel, and one of only a few images hidden on the north face.

This image is near the bottom right of the main panel and is somewhat obscure because of the lichen and more prominent surrounding images. Again, this image is intriguing in that it looks like many different things to different people.

In some ways it has an anthropomorphic appearance, with a head and hand. But some see something of a thunderbird image, with outspread wings. The hands could also represent those of a shaman. In any case, it makes for an interesting image.

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More Rock Art

All of these photos have been resized and manipulated in Photoshop to give the best representation of the image. Some color distortion is inevitable. If you would like to see higher quality versions of these shots, or if you would like to use these images for any purpose, please contact us and we would be glad to help if we can.

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This page was last updated Sunday, June 7, 2009

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