San Rafael Swell
Rock Art:
Railroad Rocks
This page contains a discussion of the rock art found on the Railroad Rocks Panels within the San Rafael Swell in Utah. 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.
This site is both historic and prehistoric. The several large rocks display many names and dates of the men who worked on the Buckhorn railroad grade in 1881. There are several petroglyphs on the north side which appear old as they are covered in considerable desert varnish. There is one that appears to be a duck, plus a snake and some zigzag lines.
- Archaeological Resources Protection Act Hotline: 800-227-7286.
- See Archaeological Site Etiquette.
- See American Antiquities Act of 1906.
- See Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.
- See More Rock Art Sites.
Other rock art sites within the San Rafael Swell:
Photo Gallery
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.
Select an image to see a full sized version.
| Anthropomorphs | |
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RR006: A simple carrot man figure with spread legs. |
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RR010: Two similar figures with oval shaped torsos and cubic heads toped with some sort of helmet or covering. The larger of the two figures has a long feather protruding from the top of its head, and possibly connecting with the top of the smaller figure. The figures appear to have large breast plates. |
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RR011: A large hand print petroglyph. probably of a left hand. |
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RR015: A small anthropomorphic figure standing beneath a zigzag line that might represent water. |
| Historic | |
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RR001: Historic writing dating from 1948. |
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RR002: Historic writing dating from 1881. |
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RR003: Historic writing dating from 1881. |
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RR004: A Mesoamerican face carved into the rock surface in recent times. |
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RR005: Einstein's relativity formula obviously cut into the rock in recent times. |
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RR007: A broad view of much of the historical hand writing. |
| Panels | |
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RR009: This image shows the two anthropomorphs from RR010 connecting with the hand print from RR011 via a zigzag line that might represent water. |
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RR013: This view of the larger panel shows the images found in RR009 as well as a duck and part of a snake. |
| Zoomorphs | |
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RR008: A close up of the duck and snake figures that can be seen in RR013. |
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RR014: This is a close up of the duck as seen in RR008 and RR013. It is interesting that it has both rear and fore legs. |
