Nine Mile Canyon, Book Cliffs Region, Utah

These petroglyphs in this black & white photograph are a beautiful example of Fremont-Northern San Rafael-style rock art. Archeologists speculate that the canyons of the Book Cliffs in eastern Utah were occupied at the end of the ancestral Puebloans reign as these people migrated north into this region from the lower-elevation canyon country to the south as the climate became warmer and drier during the late 13th century. By the looks of these figures, it’s easy to speculate as to what these people hunted at the time. Unfortunately, today, due to historic overhunting and imported diseases of domestic sheep, populations of bighorn have been drastically reduced.