A cairn found in Cohab Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park. Frank and Anne's Canyon Country Hiking and Camping Notebook.

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Rock Art—
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Rock art in Canyonlands National Park. This page contains a discussion of the rock art found within Canyonlands National Park, in Horseshoe Canyon. 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
 
 Horseshoe Canyon

The Horseshoe Unit of Canyonlands National Park is located on the west side of the Green River, due west of the Island in the Sky District. It is southeast of Goblin Valley State Park, and can only be accessed by a 32 mile dusty dirt road. There are four main panels within the canyon, the most prominent of which is the Great Gallery, the farthest from the trailhead. Map Coordinates for the Great Gallery are: 38 26.819 N; 110 12.777 W; at an elevation of 4,869 feet.

The pictographs in this canyon are the prime examples of what is known as the Barrier Canyon style, dating back to about 2000 B.C. Later the Fremont and Ancestral Puebloans left there marks in the canyon.


I believe this panel is from the Horseshoe Site within the canyon, the second set of pictographs to be encountered when hiking the trail. There are a good number of images painted here, across several feet of rock face perhaps ten feet above the current surface. As you can see, these are colorful figures of a variety of types.
Rock art panel in Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park.

This is part of the Great Gallery, which is perhaps over 100 feet wide in a large alcove facing southeast. All of the figures are perhaps twenty feet or higher above the present surface, and the area is fenced off to help preserve the art work. I would guess that most of the larger figures here are human sized. What is hard to see is that there are many smaller images worked in among these larger figures, and in some case, created right on top of these prominent figures.

Many of the figures here remind me of those we've seen in the Buckhorn Wash panel in the San Rafael Swell.

The Great Gallery rock art panel in Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park.

This image is, again, from the Great Gallery. Here you can see some of the smaller images set between the larger figures. You can also see the detail that has gone into some of these anthropomorph figures, with intricate detail work superimposed. (The little figure used in the left margin of this page is also from the Great Gallery.)

One interesting figure is the smaller anthropomorph near the bottom, just to the right of center. This may be some sort of a Kokopelli with a flute or just a representation of a hunter, with a spear or atl atl.

One of the things that struck us with many of these figures is their ghost-like appearance. Many seem to be floating, and the lower extremity seems to be only sketched in, sometimes with wavy markings that give them the impression of floating or drifting up into the sky. Perhaps the souls of departed members of the social unit.

Part of the Great Gallery rock art panel in Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park.
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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 Friday, June 19, 2009
   
 
   
 
A Canyon Country cairn.