The Bears Ears region

The Bears Ears region is named for two flat-topped buttes that rise above the surrounding mesa country. The name is older than the United States, and the place is older than the name.

Where it is

The region sits in southeastern Utah, bounded roughly by the Colorado River to the west, the Abajo Mountains to the north, the Colorado-Utah state line to the east, and the San Juan River and Navajo Nation to the south. The center of the monument is high mesa — Cedar Mesa proper — cut deeply by canyon systems running south toward the San Juan.

What you find there

Cedar Mesa is one of the densest archaeological landscapes in North America. Tens of thousands of recorded sites — and many more not yet recorded — fill the canyons and alcoves. Most of these date from the Ancestral Puebloan period, roughly 700 to 1300 CE, and represent farming communities that built stone-and-mortar dwellings in alcoves, stored grain in masonry granaries, and left painted and pecked imagery on the canyon walls.

But this is not only an archaeological landscape. It is the contemporary spiritual and ancestral home of multiple tribal nations — the Hopi, the Zuni, the Pueblo communities of the Rio Grande, the Navajo, and the Ute. Their connection to it did not end with the depopulation of the canyon villages in the late 1200s. It continues, and the region is named, in their understanding, in their languages, with their stories.

The geology, briefly

The exposed rock across the mesa top is Cedar Mesa Sandstone, a pale-cream cliff-former laid down in coastal dune environments roughly 275 million years ago during the Permian. The canyons cut through this layer down into the Halgaito Shale below, exposing the deep red-brown of the lower formations. The two buttes for which the region is named are erosional remnants of an overlying layer that has otherwise been stripped away.

The plants and animals

This is a pinyon-juniper landscape on the mesa tops, transitioning to sagebrush flats and cottonwood-lined washes in the canyons. Wildlife includes mule deer, mountain lion, ringtail, several rattlesnake species, and a dense and noticeable population of pinyon jays and Townsend’s solitaires. Spring brings wildflowers in narrow seasonal windows.

How visitors fit into all this

Visitor numbers in the region have grown substantially since the monument’s establishment in 2016. Most visitors come for short day visits to a handful of well-known sites. The cumulative effect of even careful visitation is real, and the discussion of how to manage it — between federal agencies, tribal coalitions, state governments, and visitors themselves — is ongoing.

If you are planning a first visit, the visitor information page is the practical companion to this overview, and the tips for visiting with respect are the short version of how to behave once you are here.