5 pictures
The Rock Art at Horseshoe
Canyon is the main focus of
this page, but we begin with
one picture taken at Goblin
Valley, the Utah State Park
where we camped the night
before.
Goblin Valley is roughly 30 to
40 miles SW of the town of
Green River, on a marked side
road west of route 24.
Originally called Mushroom
Valley, it has acres of
"hoodoos," oddly eroded
sandstone formations. There
are also slot canyons nearby,
although we did not visit them
on this trip.
This group of figures is part of the
"Great Gallery," one of four major
panels of pictographs at Horseshoe
Canyon.
The canyon is a part of Canyonlands
NPk, administratively, but is quite
separate and reached by 25 miles
of rough, unpaved road going east
from a point on route 24 a few miles
south of the Goblin Valley turn-off.
The figure second from the right in
this picture is called the "Ghost King"
and is the most famous of the many
"humanoid" figures in the canyon.
Note the absence of limbs in all these
figures.
The artists did know how to depict
limbs, albeit crudely, as we see in
the next picture showing a Kokapeli,
holding up his characteristic flute.
This character is found in rock art all
over the SW, often with a hunchback or
pack on his back. Some think it refers
to traveling salesmen who wandered
among the many population centers from
the present US to central Mexico. The
fact that wide-ranging trade existed is
proven by the findings in Anasazi ruins
of macaw remnants from Mexico and
seashells from the ocean.
While the great majority of
figures depicted on these
canyon walls are highly
stylized humanoids like those
above, a few animals are
depicted. We see here a bison
being hunted by a somewhat
more naturalistically drawn
hunter with a bow and
arrow.
It is believed that this rock art
was not made by Anasazis,
whose areas did not extend
this far north, but by the
roughly contemporary
Fremont people or others
perhaps thousands of years
earlier. Their lifestyle
was based on seasonal travel
for hunting and gathering and
did not involve masonry buildings
or much (if any) agriculture.
The rock art above is presented essentially as the camera
saw it, without photographic enhancement. In the last picture,
however, I used a photo editor in an attempt to make the
pictograph more clear.
