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Sun Dagger Panel, East Four Mile Recreation Site, Colorado. This page contains a discussion of the rock art found within the Canyon Pintado National Historic District, at the East Four Mile Recreation 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
 
 East Four Mile Recreation Site

The Canyon Pintado National Historic District is made up of several individual petroglyph and pictograph sites scattered over several miles, both in Canyon Pintado proper, among the canyons along the Dragonfly Road to the west, and east and west of Rangely just off of Highway 64. See our Personal Notes for more details on the East Four Mile Recreation Site.

See the following pages for more rock art from the Canyon Pintado National Historic District:

For more information on how to preserve and protect these priceless historic treasures:


This location had several different panels, some exclusively petroglyphs, and other that were exclusively pictographs. For the most part the petroglyphs we unimpressive. They tend to be small and densely cover panels throughout the canyon. What really makes this site is the solar calendar shown in the main image at the top of this page, and in some detail here. There is a large fracture rock ledge that sits above and to the south of this image. Apparently a certain times of the year and the shadow from this straight edge crosses the central point of the three horizontally aligned circles. This is known as the Sun Dagger Site.

Besides the solar implications, the small anthropomorphic figures associated with the calendar are interesting in and of themselves. Though they do not contain great detail, they are quite impressive.


This impressive little pictograph can be seen to the right of the Sun Dagger calendar image. You can make it out on the photo at the top of the page. Though I have not been to this site at the time that the shadow crosses the aligned circles, it is my suspicion, after looking at how the images are lines up, that perhaps the shadow may cross over to this image as well. But, then again, it may have its own purpose separate from the calendar.

It appears to be an anthropomorph with long bull horns protruding from its head. The body is unusual in that is is rectangular and blocky in shape, and it has the solid red paint with white areas looking almost like an apron. It has legs, but does not appear to have arms, unless the "horns" are extended arms, which seem to be reaching for that light colored area above, as if trying to catch a ball.


Of the various petroglyphs at this location, this is probably the most impressive. It may represent some sort of fertility ceremony. It's my guess that the central feature is a stalk of maize or some other grain. The horizontal waves may represent the desire for enough water to make the crop grow. I'm less certain about the lower horizontal image that appears to be some sort of counting device.
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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 Monday, July 14, 2008
   
 
   
 
A Canyon Country cairn.