Learning about the canyon country before you go
Visitor numbers in southeastern Utah are rising faster than the public resources that explain the place. A few hours of reading or a morning at a museum fills much of the gap.
Published 2 minute read
Most of what makes the canyons of southeastern Utah worth the drive is invisible to an unprepared eye. A scatter of gray sherds, a line of stones on a bench or a faint figure on a cliff reads as nothing much until someone has explained what it is and who made it. The Bears Ears country holds one of the densest records of Ancestral Puebloan life in the United States, and its places remain sacred to the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo and Ute peoples. Visitors who do not know that are the ones who tend to lean on a wall or pocket a sherd.
Why it matters now
The number of people arriving has outrun the agencies’ ability to meet them. Recorded visits to lands managed by the BLM’s Monticello Field Office rose by about two thirds between fiscal 2014 and 2018, to 427,208, with a sharp jump after the monument was designated in 2016. Cedar Mesa’s permit fees, which pay for its rangers and trailhead signs, had not changed since 1999. In its Cedar Mesa business plan, approved in September 2019 along with higher fees, the BLM states plainly that growing visitation without more visitor services is harming archaeological sites. Until that gap closes, much of the teaching falls to visitors themselves.
Public museums
The Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum in Blanding is the obvious first stop. Run by Utah State Parks, it holds one of the largest collections of Ancestral Puebloan pottery on display in the Four Corners and serves as the repository for artifacts recovered from public lands in southeastern Utah. Objects that once would have gone to distant institutions now stay in the county, and the exhibits show the kind of material the rules in the canyons protect.
Tribal cultural offices
The Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Navajo Nation and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe each run a cultural or historic preservation office. Their public statements and published histories are the most direct way to hear how descendant communities think about these places. Some knowledge is held privately and is not offered to outsiders, and a good learner accepts that answer without pressing.
Ranger stations and field offices
The Kane Gulch Ranger Station is staffed by the BLM in spring and fall, with rangers who explain site etiquette and current conditions on Cedar Mesa. The BLM Monticello Field Office is open on weekdays year-round and issues permits, maps and printed guides.
Books and professional pages
A useful shelf mixes a general account of Ancestral Puebloan archaeology, a field guide to the plants and geology of the Colorado Plateau, a history of Navajo and Ute life in San Juan County, and writing by Hopi, Zuni and Diné authors. Some older guides give routes to specific sites. Read them for history and leave the routes alone. The Society for American Archaeology’s education and outreach pages carry plain explanations of the laws that protect sites.