Utah’s Cliff-Dwelling Scenics

Utah's Cliff-Dwelling Scenics By J. Cecil Alter, Meteorologist, U. S. Weather Bureau

The ruins of the prehistoric human dwellings on the canyon shelves and recesses of San Juan and Carbon counties will long remain among Utah's most interesting scenic attractions, though it is to be regretted, with increasing travel and visitation, the specimens and fragments of pottery, tools, clothing and other articles used by the prehistoric races are rapidly disappearing from even the more remote and less accessible crevices. The paternal hand of the government, which is preserving so well all that remains within the National Parks, the National Forests, and the National Monuments, has not yet been stretched forth to include these quaint remains of a vanished people; and because of the scattered locations and the comparatively small importance of these structures, the hand may never be so extended. But this in no way diminishes the interest that surrounds these unique edifices, rural homes we may say, of the vast number of inhabitants who could not find room within the major settlements or cities laid out on the secluded canyon shelves in the long ago. . Where the climate was right, the water supply ample, the shelter sufficient from the sun, the wind and the storm, and access easiest to agricultural, pastoral, hunting or other pursuits, such cliff-wall cities were laid out as the magnificent Mesa Verde in extreme southwestern Colorado. Here, we may reasonably conjecture, the more important clans of families built for themselves such large units as Spruce Tree House, or Balcony House, of this prehistoric metropolis. And thus it may be assumed also that the scattered ruins along the San Juan river and its tributaries in extreme southeastern Utah, as well as those on the walls of the Minnie Maud in Carbon county, were built and used by a sort of small town or rural population, who sought homes and opportunity where they might be found, as men do today* i-i The cedar strewn mesas, and the limited soils in the canyon bottoms, afforded opportunity for agricultural pursuits, and are beans, today proved highly adaptable to the growing of corn, squashes, gourds and other foods that have been found in the

cliff dwellers' caches. The "slick rock" regions along the can- yons, where giant sandstone forms of grotesque and intricate

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weathering, formed ideal grazing regions for the goats the old settlers are supposed to have kept, and the prairies far hack on the mesas are ideal roaming and feeding realms for the turkeys, whose feathers softened the beds and formed parts of the dress of many an early cliff-dweller, judging by the findings in the kennel-like homes. An imposing village, high on a cliff on the south side of the San Juan river a few miles east of Bluff city, Utah, is one of the largest unprotected and unpreserved prehistoric municipalities of the entire region. It is comparatively inaccessible to the average tourist, though this does not lessen its interest nor the need for preserving it. The Montezuma and McElmo washes

Left: The Little Natural Bridge, Westwater Canyon, near Blanding, Utah. Seen from the bottom of the canyon. It is merely a span across a recess in the rim, of something less than a hundred feet. Right: The Little Natural Bridge, seen from a point on the canyon rim, near Blanding.

or canyons still farther east, heading in Colorado are also replete with ruins, varying from mere hovels to comparative mansions; and nearly all the canyon crevices in the southern portion of San Juan county were once more or less densely inhabited by the early tribes, which probably numbered as many as ten thousand according to some estimates for the entire tiliffdwelling district of the four states cornering near here. One of the most picturesque and accessible of these interesting human eyries is just to the right of the main highway leading into the San Juan bottoms at Bluff City, Utah. It is probably three hundred feet up on the face of the sandstone cliff, and at present readily accessible by way of a trail over the talus and broken rocks, though in its early day, access must have been very difficult, and entirely under the control of its occupants.

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Left: View looking totoard the mouth of the large cavern or community house on high cliff near Bluff, Utah. A spring of fine water is just to the right of the view. Several hundred people could assemble here if found desirable. Cliff houses stood just at the entrance to the cave, several hundred feet high on the face of the cliff wall. Ruins of the walls shown at distant left. Right: A close view of the cliff-house walls in the mouth of the large community house or cave, near Bluff, Utah. View from these rooms covers wide angle of approach across the canyon toward the San Juan river.

It is located in the mouth of an immense cavern or cave fortuitously split and broken out of the rocks by temperature variations and frosts. The vast amount of loose rock which must have accumulated on the comparatively level floor evidently has been carried to the front and dumped over the ledge by the occupants. The floor is irregular in shape, but is about forty by a hundred feet in size, at one side of which, well back in the cave, is a fine spring of drinking water, making of this a superior estufa or assembly room. The remains of four or five rooms of sandstone and adobe masonry are in a good state of preservation on the ledge just outside the cave, yet still sheltered by the great overhanging rock wall above, and apparently numerous other walls have been removed by centuries of erosion, earthquakes, or other influences, for the porch-like shelf is spacious and attractive for such use, and appears well worn. The walls are of shaped sandstone, set in adobe cement; and their surfaces perfectly vertical and their corners perfectly squared, one being gracefully but symmetrically curved. This latter wall, at right angles with the cliff wall, has apparently been moved from the main wall bodily by earthquake or other settling movement, leaving an opening of a few inches between the end of the wall and the cliff face. And in this wall, shown in the photograph, are a number of round, well mortared holes, apparently pointing nowhere, abont

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one and one-half inches in diameter. As one or two point downward and toward the cliff wall, it is probable they were used to carry sticks or poles for hanging articles on within the room.

Ruins Near Blanding A comparatively large village ruins is located in Westwater canyon, about a mile west of the highway from Blanding to Bluff, about two miles south of Blanding, though there are not many of the residence walls remaining. This is probably due to flood waters, as this region receives a relatively large precipita-

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Left: A small abode, or a large cubby, hole, faced with a decaying adobe wall, shown in the dark crevice in the upper portion of the view. Located on the Minnie Maud, east of Harper, Utah. Right: The shaly ledges in this 300-foot cliff wall, in Calf Canyon, near Bluff, Utah, contain several adobe walls, now inaccessible. The immense circular aperture nearly a hundred feet across, near the top of the wall, is also believed to have been occupied, centuries ago. Two-story cliffhouse wall at the arrow point.

tion, often sudden showers of large proportions, and the canyon is generally less than a hundred feet deep, the shale recesses forming the sandstone ledges in the walls being rather low down toward the small stream.

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However, there is an unusually large number of cubby holes formed by short adobe walls across corners, and stopping the front of crevice-like shelves, with small apertures for access. These formed excellent storages or caches for corn, beans, gourds, squashes, feathers, cotton, clothing, tools, and so forth. Most of these are fairly secure above flood waters, and are well back on the larger shelves, evidently forming closets and cupboards for'the houses that once stood on the shelves. One large community cavern is well surrounded with cubby holes made of small adobe wall partitions. One interesting house in this collection was built unusually low on a large well worn boulder on the creek bottom which has undoubtedly been worn by movement down stream with flood waters. Subsequent floods have carried away most of the structure, though a corner of the house still stands, vertical and square, in a good state of preservation, as shown in the photo-

Left: Remnant of cliff-dwelling walls, on boulder in bottom of canyon, showing also cubby holes in adjacent cliff wall. This boulder had been transported by flood waters to its present position before the cliff-dwellers came, and subsequently a portion of the dwelling was carried away, evidently by flood waters. Located in Westwater Canyon group of ruins, near Blanding, Utah. Right: A small circular cairn 75 feet from the bottom of the wall, in Minnie Maud canyon at Harper, Utah. The horizontal poles shown are cemented in the stone and mortar construction. Corn was found cashed here many years ago.

graph. Adjacent in the main wall are sealed-in cubby holes, which were evidently within the room as it stood originally. A great many articles used by the prehistoric people have been found within these abandoned homes, a few indicating very well a state of civilization and advancement beyond that of the average primitive red man. The pottery was decorated,

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some of the adobe interiors were plastered over, and done in bands of differing colors, hides were made into parts of cloth ing, especially sandals, feathers and cotton were woven into a semblance of cloth, and many quills and small bones, sharpened on the rocks, were made into awls or needles or punches, though no metals have ever been found. The unique forms in the sandstone, along the rims of these interesting canyons, appear to be of intentional design, in many places, sentinels, human figures, "locomotives," chimneys, twins, pillars and others being common. In Westwater canyon, a short distance below the ruins, and across the canyon, is one of the most perfectly formed of Utah's galaxy of natural bridges, the — Little Bridge, Blanding folks affectionately call it. This slab of sandstone, left hanging quite securely, bridge-like, to the wall of the canyon, by the breaking away of the wall about it, does not span the canyon, nor a ravine, but merely spans a recess in the rim wall a distance of less than a hundred feet. However, it is a most perfect span as shown by the photograph, and must

of course have been familiar to the moccasined feet of the untold centuries of the past. Salt Lake City, Utah

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k An outer wall near the community house or cavern entrance, near Bluff, Utah, showing holes in the wall. This wall has settled away from the cliff wall a few inches. The hat on top of the wall will give an idea of the size of the wall. From favored positions these walls may be seen from the bottom of the canyon, near the main highway into Bluff, about a mile distant. Access is by a good trail.