Petroglyph Butte: Rock Art

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

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

Petroglyph Butte

Campsite

This page contains a discussion of the rock art found near the ghost town of Moores Station, Nevada. 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

A short distance from the ghost town of Moores Station, there is a geological feature noted on the maps as Petroglyph Butte. Below the butte there is a series of cliff faces that are covered by intricate rock art patterns, mostly petroglyphs. Be sure to follow all appropriate restrictions when visiting this site.

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.

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.

This small panel has several interesting features, including what appears to be some sort of calendar or marking device along its right edge (the series of vertical dots). Perhaps the vertical lines across the top are also a counting device or calendar of some sort.

Rock art from near Moore's Station, Nevada. This is the largest panel at the site. Using the plants at the base of the cliff as scale, you can get some sense as to the dimensions of this image. Obviously, this is a complex work, probably worked on over a period of time, with many of the individual pieces overlapping earlier work. Again, there seems to be some sort of calendar or counting device along the right edge of the left panel, near the crack line. There are also other lines of dots here and there through the work, as well as nine short bars lined up in the upper left corner. There is also the prominent horizontal line with a large circle near the bottom the panel.

Among the many images, there seem to be quite a few of the three pronged, sort of V shaped pieces that remind me a bit of the hand side of an atl-atl, but this is only conjecture.

This image shows a clearly defined atl-atl, with the circular hand grip and the extended shaft of the spear. At least this is what many interpreters have called this common image, and it seems to be accurate when you see an actual example of an atl-atl in a museum.

This panel also seems to have many counting dots, which some believe may represent hunting kills or, perhaps, a rough calendar.

This last image show more of the three and four pronged images found on other panels at the site, as well as prominent vertical lines that could represent another method of counting or keeping track of time. There are also strings of dots as well as concentric circles.

| Top |

This page was last updated Monday, June 15, 2009

The Last Page of the Internet