History

Geologic History

As with all of Utah's national parks, the history of Canyonlands is written primarily in the language of stone. If we were to think of the formation of Canyonlands as a battle between the elements, the infantry would be comprised of limestone, sandstone and shale, and the cavalry would be water, gravity and the extremes of heat and cold. Their perpetual struggle has resulted in the magnificence of the Canyonlands we know today.

We begin our story some 320 million years ago in the Pennsylvanian geologic period. At that time, the Canyonlands area was a basin. Nearby, to the northeast, stood an ancient mountain range some 30,000 feet high. It has been named the Uncompahgre Uplift.

The basin was repeatedly flooded by seawater from an adjacent ocean. Flooding was followed by evaporation and an accumulation of salts. Meanwhile, debris from erosion of the ancient Uncompahgre Uplift added layers of dark shale to the basin area. 

Over the next 10 million years, the rocky infantry advanced as layers of limestone, sandstone and more shale were depos-ited. But by about 10 million years ago, the forces of erosion started to gain ground. Since then, at least one vertical mile of rock has been stripped away from the Canyonlands, most of it having been carried away by the mighty waters of the Green and Colorado rivers. The fantastically carved spires, fins and cliffs that make up the region today, are the result of this tireless and ongoing clash between rock, time and the elements.

Human History

While no conquering army ever marched through Canyonlands, people have hunted game here for thousands of years. The Paleo-Indian cultures lived in this area as far back as 11,500 B.C. Their descendants, the Desert Archaic people, also hunted and gathered here, and by about 1000 B.C. began to grow corn. As agriculture became more important, these people gave up their nomadic ways and developed permanent settlements. The culture that planted crops and built villages is called the ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi).

By about A.D. 1100, there was ancestral Puebloan occupation in the Needles District of Canyonlands. The ruins around Salt Creek are evidence of small settlements. 

The Fremont people, whose origins are more obscure, lived across the Colorado River to the northwest of the ancestral Puebloans. Both groups left their mark on Canyonlands. In all three areas of the park, there are scenes of hunting and harvesting, stylized figures and abstract designs left by ancient artists working in stone for purposes that remain unclear. Newspaper Rock Recreation Site, on the road into the Needles District, gives evidence of their existence in the petroglyphs left on the rock face.

For about 200 years, the Fremont and ancestral Puebloan peoples cultivated crops in canyon bottoms and left rock art on canyon walls, but this was not to be a permanent home for them. A 20-year drought in the 13th century forced these groups to leave Canyonlands in search of more favorable living conditions. 

For the next several hundred years, Canyonlands remained little used. Native people may have hunted in the area. It was probably not until the 1800s that the first Europeans entered Canyonlands. In 1836, fur trapper Denis Julien traveled through this rugged country. Several more efforts to explore the area followed shortly thereafter. In 1859, Captain John N. Macomb entered Canyonlands in order to locate the confluence of the Green and the Grand rivers (as the Colo-rado River was then called), to chart the course of the San Juan River and to determine the most direct route from the Rio Grande of New Mexico to the small towns of southern Utah. John Wesley Powell explored the area by river in 1869 and again in 1871. Powell's expeditions resulted in the first detailed geologic and topographic information on this area. At about this time, Spanish vaqueros (cowboys) were herding cattle through the area and some small settlements had been established to the west of the park on the what was then called the Great Sage Plain.

By 1885, cattle ranching was becoming a big business in southeast Utah, and cattle were beginning to graze in Canyon--lands itself. Some of the descendants of ranchers, who were running cattle operations in Canyonlands during the last century, are still in residence today and many still raise cattle on the family ranch.

In the 1950s and 1960s, prospectors explored Canyonlands for uranium deposits. Bulldozed roads crisscrossed the landscape, and several deep shafts were dug. Although ore was found, the yields were not worth the effort required to extract it. In September 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation preserving Canyonlands as a national park for the enrichment of generations to come.