Colorado Riverway: Kane Creek Road Rock Art

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

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

Colorado Riverway

Campsite

This page contains a discussion of the rock art found in the Moab area of Utah, along the Kane Creek Road, in the Colorado Riverway. 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

Kane Creek Road

The Kane Creek Road heads out of Moab to the west, along the south side of the Colorado River. There is some modern development in this area, where old uranium mines have been converted into cheap living quarters and storage areas. But here and there on the sheer faces of the sandstone cliffs one can find some unusual examples of petroglyphs. This includes the Golf Course Rock Art Site, the Kane Creek Boulevard Rock Art Site, the Moonflower Canyon Petroglyph Site, and several more isolated panels.

See also the rock art from Arches National Park, the Golf Course Panel, and Potash Road.
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 is a close up of one of the panels, and seems to show a human figure with extremely large hands. If you look close you can see the peck marks that were left my the artist's primitive tools. It also looks as if vandals have knocked away a portion of the sandstone just above this figure. I believe this figure is at the Moonflower Canyon Petroglyph site.

Rock art from along Kane Creek Road, near Moab, Utah.

Birthing Rock, along Kane Creek Road, near Moab, Utah.

The Birthing Rock, at Map Coordinates (NAD83): ~ 38 30.027 N; 109 36.466 W; at an elevation of 4,123 feet, is a famous location. There is a large boulder that has fallen from the cliffs above, but it has been there long enough that early American cultures were able to leave their art work. What makes this image so unique is that it appears to depict the act of giving birth. In this case, almost exactly the proverbial bowling ball. It looks painful. This image is probably about two feet tall.

This is a unique image that we found on one of the many panels along Kane Creek Road. Most images don't show much facial detail, so one wonders if perhaps this work was altered by later "artists" (vandals). A close study of the relative weathering of the chip stone might give an indication of the time frame. Also notice all of the small foot prints along the left side of this 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 Saturday, June 20, 2009

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