You find some strange things while wandering around in the desert, and here's a good example.
I had a hand-drawn map of some petroglyph locations in Tusher Canyon, not far from Green River. To reach the canyon required a drive across some miles of dirt road/wash in what appeared to be empty desert. Along the way, I came upon an odd "community" of run down RVs, buildings and other equipment. No one was around to ask what this collection of oddities was for.
I saw two signs that had names I could Google, Jenkstar Ranch and Building
Man. I later found the Jenkstars' web site which describes a "
collective of up-cycle engineers and artists who develop creative solutions for real-world problems. The mission is to use art and science to inspire the use of renewable energy and sustainable living applications across the globe." "Building Man" is an event produced in the desert, featuring art, music and home-made products to promote sustainable living. It claims to be family friendly, unlike the Burning Man event held annually in the Nevada desert. Admissions help finance the group's future projects. What a surprising find. The three petroglyph sites in Tusher Canyon were pretty mundane, so I won't bore you with photos of them.
Moving along, the next morning I drove into the San Rafael Swell where there is more interesting rock art I have visited before. The first is Black Dragon Canyon, named for one of the pictographs found there. The canyon is one of many in the San Rafael Reef, that huge crack in the earth's crust that exposes more than 250 million years of rock layers.
The art is Barrier Canyon Style, meaning it is quite old and painted rather than chiseled. The drawings are fairly well preserved because they are in a protected area. There is some damage from modern inscriptions, such as the one by Vida Gunnarson (presumably an early settler in this region).
The pictograph for which the canyon is named was apparently thought to be a drawing of a dragon, but I've never agreed with that interpretation. First, it isn't black, it's red. Also, what may have been thought of as a "tail", I think is a river. The "dragon" appears to me to be a bird, such as a heron or crane. I also see what may be a jumping fish near the bird. What do you think?
Driving I-70 across the "reef" provides spectacular scenery. It was an engineering marvel to construct this eight mile section of highway, and one of the most expensive per mile. It wasn't completed until long after the original interstate system and required removal of 3.5 million cubic yards of rock.
Once through the "reef", I turned onto the gravel road that leads to Buckhorn Wash, where another famous art site is located. This part of the Swell is called "Castle Valley" because the many buttes reminded the first settlers of the medieval castles in Europe.
A band of wild burros also use the road.
The old bridge across the San Rafael River is called the "swinging bridge" because it is suspended from cables anchored in the ground. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1937, the bridge was used for automobile traffic until the 1990s, but now is open only for pedestrian traffic. The river is quite small until flooded by rain somewhere upstream.
The Buckhorn Wash art panel is also Barrier Canyon Style. These figures depict the practice of snake handling, and some of them have wings.
I'll interrupt this trip for now and pick up with the next travelogue.
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