Book Cliffs Region, Utah

The petroglyphs in this black & white panorama photograph are a beautiful example of Fremont-Northern San Rafael-style rock art. Since they are thought to be some of the most recent of this style, archeologists speculate that this region was occupied at the end of the reign of the Ancestral Puebloans as they migrated north into the Book Cliffs region from the lower-elevation canyons south of here as the climate warmed and dried during the late 13th century. By the looks of these figures, it’s easy to speculate as to what these people predominantly hunted in this area at the time. Unfortunately, today, due to historic overhunting and imported diseases of domestic sheep, populations of bighorn have been drastically reduced all across the Colorado Plateau.