McConkie Ranch Petroglyphs. Memorial Day 2019 trip, part 8

Yeah, it was a long day and we saw a lot (click here to see the last adventure we had - Flaming Gorge Dam. Memorial Day 2019 trip, part 7) but we were still far from calling it a day and the future was a bit hazy for us.

 

We left the dam and drove back. But again, our path was not direct and took longer than one can expect. When we got to Vernal, we made a turn to explore another ancient spot... Not as old as the rocks in the Sheep Creek Geological Area but still quite old.

There are many places in Utah and Colorado where petroglyphs can be found. And mostly they are very similar. Some well known symbols (even though we mostly don't know their meaning), common animals, stick figures. Everything is rather schematic and looks like drafts. The only place where the petroglyphs are different is the place where we were heading ;). This place is somehow unique and the pictures carved in the rocks are different there. They are more detailed and mostly show people. Just a couple of animals and very few symbols. And the images of people are not schematic, but rich and illustrative. You may even see some emotions (people crying or laughing) and relationships (images of two people holding hands is incredibly rare). And something else but we will talk about this later.

No one can say how old these petroglyphs are. All that is known is that they were created sometimes between 0 and 1200 AC. Pretty vague, I know... The petroglyphs are located on the rock wall about 20 miles from Vernal on private land called McConkie Ranch. All you have to do is just leave your car in the parking lot (nice fence decoration, by the way) and climb just a few hundred feet to find some outstanding images.

 

The most interesting, as I said above, are the details. The faces, head decoration and some groups called headhunters (but they have nothing to do with recruiters). How else can you call people who hold the heads in their hands... It is not known whether these are pictures of a war, or a ritual, or anything else. But some of the heads had some red ink where the necks were before the people were beheaded. So, probably, a bloody ceremony or big victory is shown here. Who knows... There are many theories, but nothing is certain.

One of the few depictions of animals is that of a man hunting a bear. It is located quite high and you can easily miss it if your eye trained on the lower part of the wall.

 

Some of the images are hard to see, but some are still bright and easy to find.

 

We spent a couple of hours walking along the wall and solving this riddle... We definitely would have stayed there longer, but we were tired, baked by the hot sun and we still had about three hours to get to the town where we planned to spend the night so that.. we left without finding an answer.

 

We left Utah shortly as well (sorry to show the Welcome sign, but we figured out they don't have the Farewell sign ;) ) and enjoyed a drive along the Yampa river, where fields were bright and lush and these views made our path much more pleasant...

To be continued...  

The pictures were taken on May 26, 2019.