DeBinky Wells Road Site

This past weekend Yeongmi and I went on a field trip with URARA down in Moab.  We only caught the first day, but what sights we saw!  My favorite was the very last site of the day, off DeBinky Wells Road, north of Dead Horse Point and the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands.  Dennis DeVore led us to the site and it was amazing.  Since this site is not well known and unvandalized, I am not posting any specific location information and the photos posted have no GPS information attached.

Most of the Panel in DStretch using the LDS filter

Using Structure-from-Motion (SfM) for Rock Art

One of the coolest presentations from last week's URARA symposium in Delta was the one by Robert Mark and Evelyn Billo on using photographs to generate 3D models of rock art sites.  The technology is closely related to that used with Microsoft's Photosynth program which I wrote about in my blog a few years ago.  However, while Photosynth allows you to zoom around and view a site from the point of view of each camera shot, the tools that Mark and Billo were talking about allow you to actually reconstruct the site as a 3D mesh and overlay the information from the photos as a texture using the same technology.  This is really cool.

Pictograph Panel on Black Rock Mesa

To test this out, I took a series of photos of the boulder above which we visited on the Monday URARA field trip.  I got it from three or four different angles and shot it in close up sections.  I then input these images into two programs.  1) Agisoft Photoscan, which is the program that Mark and Billo talked about at the symposium, and 2) Autodesk ReMake, which I found online.  Photoscan has a free 30-day trial and seems to generate better results, but it costs $179 for the basic version.   ReMake runs the analysis on the cloud and can be much faster, but costs $30 per month once the trial version expires.

Below is a clip of the model that ReMake generated in the form of a quick movie.

The Photoscan-generated model can be viewed at this link.

Here are the same photos at Photosynth.

URARA 2016 Symposium

I just go back from my first attendance at the Utah Rock Art Research Association (URARA) annual symposium.  This year it was held in Delta, Utah.  It was one of the funnest experiences I've had in a long time.

Sheep from Miller Canyon

Nine Mile Canyon

The Pregnant Buffalo

This past weekend I took my first field trip with the Utah Rock Art Research Association (URARA) and got to see some of the rock art at Nine Mile Canyon.  The trip was every bit as spectacular as I had been lead to believe it would be.  The rock art is so extensive there it would take years to see it all, but I did get a good sampling of many of the well-known sites and quite a few of the lesser-known ones as well.

Parowan Gap

"The Zipper" at Parowan Gap

This past Saturday, my wife and I were in Cedar City to see a couple of plays at the Shakespeare Festival.  With some free time in the morning, we opted for a trip out to Parowan Gap to see the petroglyphs there.  It was worth the trip, though I wish I had brought a real camera.  Instead I had to rely on the iPhone for the photos here.

Fremont Indian State Park

Sheep Petroglyphs at Fremont Indian State Park in Utah

Fremont Indian State Park is located alongside I-70 in Sevier County, Utah.  The site was discovered in the 1980's when the interstate was constructed in Clear Creek Canyon.  This site was the largest collection of Fremont houses at a single site ever discovered in the state of Utah.  Sadly, most of these were destroyed in the construction.  However there was a great deal of archeological work done and Fremont Indian State Park was created in 1987 to preserve what was left.

Familiar Motifs

I visited the U.S. Museum of the American Indian in Washington yesterday morning (April 4, 2015) and ran across this work of art on the third floor that contains lots of the same motifs one finds in Utah rock art.

Colorado River Near Moab

Panel along the Banks of the Colorado downstream from Moab

Last June I had a visitor in town and took him down to Dead Horse State Park and Canyonlands National Park.  We drove back down the Shaffer Trail, past the potash ponds and along the Colorado River.

Rock Art Tour of the Swell

DStretch enhanced photo from Buckhorn Draw August 2014

I took a quick rock art tour of the San Rafael Swell last Saturday with a couple of friends.  We didn't hit any new sites, but revisited Rochester Creek, Moore Cutoff, Short Canyon, Black Dragon Canyon and Buckhorn Draw.

Provo Canyon Petroglyphs Revisited

This week on Tuesday I hiked back up to the boulder field near Johnson's Hollow in Provo Canyon and revisited some of the petroglyphs there.  I first visited this site in January 2011 and reported on it last August.  I was accompanied by my son, Alan, and my dog, Stretch, the dauchshund.  We saw several petroglyphs I have have seen there before.  And we found a new boulder I had not seen before.

The "new" boulder

This new boulder is further east and uphill of where I have looked before.  I suspect there are a great many more in this area one could find with a little time and patience.

Newspaper Rock Petroglyphs

Newspaper Rock is a Utah State Monument located on State Route 211 in San Juan County, Utah.  It is in the upper part of Indian Creek Canyon and very close to the road.  The site is similar to that at Rochester Creek in Emery County in that it contains a wide variety of rock art styles that span a vast amount of time.

Moab Golf Course Petroglyphs

DStretch YBK Filter

The petroglyph panel near the golf course in Moab, Utah is quite easily accessible and is literally located right along a paved road in a nice residential area.  The figures here are rather iconic of Moab and their reproductions, especially "Moab Man" (on the far left above) can be found on signs and merchandise in the area.  The figures are classified as "Formative Era" which generally means Fremont, but Moab was a sort of borderland between the Fremont and Ancestral Puebloans (aka Anasazi) during this time and the figures here show influences from both cultures.

Courthouse Wash Rock Art

The pictographs at Courthouse Wash are primarily Barrier Canyon Style.  There are also some smaller Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan petroglyphs here.

Sego Canyon Rock Art

Barrier Canyon Pictographs from Site 2

The rock art panels in Sego Canyon (aka Thompson Canyon) are some of the best Barrier Canyon Style art in Utah.  The ratio of impressiveness to difficulty of access is quite high.  There are also some very high quality Fremont figures here too

These rock art panels are easily accessible by car along a paved road.  Exit I-70 at the town of Thompson, exit 187, and drive north through the town and up the canyon for about 4.4 miles.  There is a parking lot on the left-hand side of the road.

Moore Cutoff Petroglyphs

The petrographs along the Moore Cutoff Road are quite easy to find and interesting.  There are a variety of styles to be found here cut into various boulders that have rolled down from the cliffs.  There is also a fossilized set of dinosaur tracks on one of the boulders.

The Moore Cutoff Road connects I-70 with Utah Highway 10.  The junction with I-15 is at the turnoff for the Eagle Canyon scenic viewpoint around mile marker 114.  The junctions with Utah Highway 10 are between mile markers 16 and 17 and between mile markers 21 and 22.  The cutoff road was paved a few years back so the site is accessible with any vehicle.

The map below show the turnout for the site.

The best way to explore is to first visit the few obvious glyph-covered boulders just to the northwest of the parking lot.  After that, start exploring and see what other hidden gems you can find.  There are many smaller ones here to find if you just look around.

View Larger Map

BCS Petroglyph

Most Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) rock art examples are pictographs that have been painted on the rock using a red/orange/pink or white pigment.  The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, the Buckhorn Draw and Head of Sinbad pictographs are classic examples.

However, I did run into a small example of a BCS petroglyph in Short Canyon.  Petroglyphs were chipped or pecking into the stone using a harder stone as a chisel.  The example below was very faint and only eight or ten inches small.  But is certainly looks BCS to me.

That should be "Great Gallery."

© 2013  Kerk L. Phillips

Escalante Canyon Rock Art

The stretch of the Escalante River between the town of Escalante and the confluence with Death Hollow has at least 3 good rock art panels.  Two of these are petroglyph panels located on cliff faces at bends in the canyon and one is a pictograph panel in a large alcove.  All are on the north side of the river.  The map below shows their approximate location (the second red dot is a bit too far to the right).  All three panels show a heavy Fremont influence.

Approximate Location of the Three Panels

Provo Canyon Petroglyphs

I went hiking near Johnson's Hole in Provo Canyon with my son, Alan, in January of 2011 and we finally found the petroglphys there. Back in Fall of 2005, my neighbor, Don Roberts, and I hiked through the same area looking for them, but couldn't find any. I'd been through the area again several times, but never stopped to look seriously.

They're carved into several boulder on the hillside to the southeast of Johnson's hole. They look very old, but that could be simply because they are carved into limestone boulders lying out in the open and they have weathered very rapidly.

Neon Canyon

The petroglyph panels near the mouth of Neon Canyon are easy to find and quite impressive.  They are located several hundred yards north and south of the mouth of Neon Canyon where is meets the Escalante River.

From the Upstream Panel

Buckhorn Draw

The Buckhorn Draw panel is a well-known example of Barrier Canyon style rock art located in the San Rafael Swell in Emery County.  It is accessible from a well-graded road and is a popular stopping spot for travelers driving through the Swell for sightseeing or recreation.

While the style is primarily Barrior Canyon, there are also many Fremont figures and some of the main figures are clearly Barrier Canyon figures that were overpainted by Fremont artists.  The panel is located in Buckhorn Draw (hence the name) which is a natural route through the Swell.  It has been a widely-used route for millennia and was part of the Old Spanish Trail.  As a result there are many relatively modern markings alongside the native American rock art.  The site was refurbished in the late 1990's as part of Utah's state centennial celebration and the more recent additions are now largely obscured, but still visible.

 Barrier Canyon figures in dark red, overpainted by Fremont figures in yellow.