Range Creek

Last updated

Range Creek, rising in the Book Cliffs in Emery County, Utah, is a high tributary of the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado River. The creek flows year around.

Contents

It has been nominated for classification as a National Wild and Scenic River.

One 4,200-acre area near the Creek, 44 miles southeast of Price, Utah, contains the prehistoric hamlets of the Fremont culture, people who lived in the area between A.D. 200 and 1300. [1]

Prehistory

The Range Creek canyon was first publicized in 2020 as an area with pristine archaeological remains and rock art of the Fremont culture, a precontact Great Basin archaeological culture that was contemporaneous to the Ancestral Pueblo culture located to the south.

Discovery of ruins and artifacts

A cattle rancher owned the 4,200 acres of land along the Creek by the name of Waldo Wilcox. He recognized the value of the prehistoric remains and protected them by erecting a gate with "no trespassing" signs on the only road in. [2] He kept the artifacts a secret. There were many, according to Smithsonian: [3]

Pit houses dug halfway in the ground, their roofs caved in, dotted the valley floor and surrounding hills. Arrowheads, beads, ceramic shards, and stone-tool remnants were strewn all over. Human bones poked out of rock overhangs, and hundreds of bizarre human figures with tapered limbs and odd projections emanating from their heads were chiseled on the cliff walls ... the pit houses were intact ... and granaries were stuffed with corncobs a thousand years old.

In 2001 he sold the property to the Trust for Public Land, which later deeded it to the state of Utah. Wilcox retained the rights to any subsurface mineral and energy deposits. State archaeological developed a plan for carefully protecting and studying the cultural resources of Range Creek. Interest was high due to the undisturbed nature of the site. In December 2009, the State of Utah turned over stewardship of Range Creek to the University of Utah archaeology staff in a land swap deal. [4]

Research completed in 2006 indicated that the land included 1,000-year-old hamlets of the Fremont people "highly mobile hunters and farmers who lived mostly in Utah from around A.D. 200 to 1300 before disappearing..." [1]

As of early 2020, The Natural History Museum of Utah at the University of Utah was managing the property as the "Range Creek Field Station". [5] A report at the time stated that the "vast majority of the sites recorded to date are associated with the Fremont archaeological complex, which dates between about A.D. 500 and A.D. 1350". [6]

The property was open to day-trip visitors for a nominal fee, with a pass—for a specific date --- available for purchase in advance, online; only a limited number of passes were issued for each day. Only pedestrian and horse traffic was allowed to enter the site, and only via the north gate. (The Creek site is surrounded by BLM land, which is "part of a wilderness study area, which prevents mechanized travel".) [7] Primitive camping was allowed outside the gate. There were no services or cell phone service in Range Creek Canyon; high temperatures in summer, and black bears, were of concern. The north gate of the Range Creek Canyon, where parking was available, is on "a steep and narrow unimproved road" which is impassible during wet conditions and requires a high clearance vehicle, preferably with a 4-wheel drive. [8] [9] Guided tours were available from three companies. The Range Creek Research Project [10] was underway, though not during summer 2020. [11] [12]

See also

Sources

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emery, Utah</span> Town in Utah, United States

Emery is a town in Emery County, Utah, United States. The population was 288 at the 2010 census.

Yampa River River in northwestern Colorado, United States

The Yampa River flows 250 miles (400 km) through northwestern Colorado in the United States. Rising in the Rocky Mountains, it is a tributary of the Green River and a major part of the Colorado River system. The Yampa is one of the few free-flowing rivers in the western United States, with only a few small dams and diversions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dinosaur National Monument</span> National monument in Colorado and Utah, United States

Dinosaur National Monument is an American national monument located on the southeast flank of the Uinta Mountains on the border between Colorado and Utah at the confluence of the Green and Yampa rivers. Although most of the monument area is in Moffat County, Colorado, the Dinosaur Quarry is located in Utah, north of the town of Jensen, Utah. The nearest Colorado town is Dinosaur while the nearest city is Vernal, Utah.

Fremont culture Pre-Columbian archaeological culture

The Fremont culture or Fremont people is a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah, where the culture's sites were discovered by local indigenous peoples like the Navajo and Ute. In Navajo culture, the pictographs are credited to people who lived before the flood. The Fremont River itself is named for John Charles Frémont, an American explorer. It inhabited sites in what is now Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado from AD 1 to 1301. It was adjacent to, roughly contemporaneous with, but distinctly different from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples located to their south.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glen Canyon</span> Part of the Colorado River in Utah and Arizona, US

Glen Canyon is a natural canyon carved by a 169.6-mile (272.9 km) length of the Colorado River, mostly in southeastern and south-central Utah, in the United States. Glen Canyon starts where Narrow Canyon ends, at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Dirty Devil River. A small part of the lower end of Glen Canyon extends into northern Arizona and terminates at Lee's Ferry, near the Vermilion Cliffs. Like the Grand Canyon farther downstream, Glen Canyon is part of the immense system of canyons carved by the Colorado River and its tributaries.

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument Monument protecting significant sites of ancient Native Americans

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically-significant landscape located in the southwestern region of the U.S. state of Colorado. The monument's 176,056 acres (71,247 ha) are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, as directed in the Presidential proclamation which created the site on June 9, 2000. Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, better known as the National Conservation Lands. This system comprises 32 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management to conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes recognized for their outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four separate sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. As of 2005, over 6,000 individual archeological sites had been identified within the monument.

Fremont Indian State Park and Museum

Fremont Indian State Park and Museum is a state park of Utah, US, which interprets archaeological remains of the Fremont culture. The park is located in Sevier County, Utah in the Clear Creek Canyon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muddy Creek (central Utah)</span>

Muddy Creek is a stream in central Utah, United States, that drains portions of Emery, Sanpete, Sevier, and Wayne counties.

Southwestern archaeology is a branch of archaeology concerned with the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico. This region was first occupied by hunter-gatherers, and thousands of years later by advanced civilizations, such as the Ancestral Puebloans, the Hohokam, and the Mogollon.

Interstate 70 in Utah Section of Interstate highway in Utah

Interstate 70 (I-70) is a mainline route of the Interstate Highway System in the United States connecting Utah and Maryland. The Utah section runs east–west for approximately 232 miles (373 km) across the central part of the state. Richfield is the largest Utah city served by the freeway, which does not serve or connect any urban areas in the state. The freeway was built as part of a system of highways connecting Los Angeles and the Northeastern United States. I-70 was the second attempt to connect southern California to the east coast of the United States via central Utah, the first being a failed attempt to construct a transcontinental railroad. Parts of that effort were reused in the laying out of the route of I-70.

Ninemile Canyon (Utah)

Ninemile Canyon is a canyon, approximately 40 miles (64 km) long, located in Carbon and Duchesne counties in eastern Utah, United States. Promoted as "the world's longest art gallery", the canyon is known for its extensive rock art, most of it created by the Fremont culture and the Ute people. The rock art, shelters, and granaries left behind by the Fremont make Ninemile Canyon a destination for archaeologists and tourists alike.

Horseshoe Canyon (Emery and Wayne counties, Utah)

Horseshoe Canyon, formerly known as Barrier Canyon, is in a remote area west of the Green River and north of the Canyonlands National Park Maze District in Utah, United States. It is known for its collection of Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) rock art, including both pictographs and petroglyphs, which was first recognized as a unique style here. A portion of Horseshoe Canyon containing The Great Gallery is part of a detached unit of Canyonlands National Park. The Horseshoe Canyon Unit was added to the park in 1971 in an attempt to preserve and protect the rock art found along much of its length.

Pilling Figurines

The Pilling Figurines are a set of eleven clay figurines made by the Fremont culture. They were discovered in 1950 by Clarence Pilling, a Utah rancher, under a rock overhang in a side canyon of Range Creek, Utah. The figurines are believed to be around 1000 years old.

USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum Natural history museum in Price, Utah

The Prehistoric Museum, USU-Eastern, formerly known as the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum, is a museum accredited by the American Alliance of Museums located in Price, Utah. The museum seeks to promote public understanding of prehistory through interpretive exhibits, educational programs, collections, and research. The museum is located near many paleontological and archaeological sites in a region known as Castle Country, notably in the San Rafael Swell and nearby canyons throughout the Book Cliffs area such as Nine Mile Canyon and Range Creek Canyon.

Zion National Park National park in Utah, United States

Zion National Park is an American national park located in southwestern Utah near the town of Springdale. A prominent feature of the 229-square-mile (590 km2) park is Zion Canyon, which is 15 miles (24 km) long and up to 2,640 ft (800 m) deep. The canyon walls are reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone eroded by the North Fork of the Virgin River. The lowest point in the park is 3,666 ft (1,117 m) at Coalpits Wash and the highest peak is 8,726 ft (2,660 m) at Horse Ranch Mountain. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert regions, the park has a unique geography and a variety of life zones that allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Numerous plant species as well as 289 species of birds, 75 mammals, and 32 reptiles inhabit the park's four life zones: desert, riparian, woodland, and coniferous forest. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches.

Prehistory of Colorado provides an overview of the activities that occurred prior to Colorado's recorded history. Colorado experienced cataclysmic geological events over billions of years, which shaped the land and resulted in diverse ecosystems. The ecosystems included several ice ages, tropical oceans, and a massive volcanic eruption. Then, ancient layers of earth rose to become the Rocky Mountains.

The Trinchera Cave Archeological District (5LA9555) is an archaeological site in Las Animas County, Colorado with artifacts primarily dating from 1000 BC to AD 1749, although there were some Archaic period artifacts found. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and is located on State Trust Lands.

Recapture Canyon is a canyon along Recapture Creek east of Blanding, San Juan County, Utah, United States. It is an archaeological site, and is located on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management closed it to motorized vehicles in 2007 due to damage caused by illegal trail construction.

Cold Spring Mountain is a summit in Moffat County, Colorado. It was also known as O-WI-YU-KUTS Plateau. It is on the United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps of Sparks, Beaver Basin, Willow Creek Butte, Big Joe Basin, and Irish Canyon.

References

Coordinates: 39°18′27″N110°03′26″W / 39.30750°N 110.05722°W / 39.30750; -110.05722