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Nine Mile Canyon
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Nine Mile Canyon is a canyon, approximately long, located in the counties of Carbon and Duchesne in eastern Utah, in the Western United States. Nicknamed "the world’s longest art gallery," the canyon is known for its extensive rock art, most of it created by the Fremont culture and the Ute people. The rock art, shelters, and granaries left behind by the Fremont make Nine Mile Canyon a destination for archaeologists and tourists alike.
The canyon became a main transport corridor in the region during the 1880s.
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Encyclopedia
Nine Mile Canyon is a canyon, approximately long, located in the counties of Carbon and Duchesne in eastern Utah, in the Western United States. Nicknamed "the world’s longest art gallery," the canyon is known for its extensive rock art, most of it created by the Fremont culture and the Ute people. The rock art, shelters, and granaries left behind by the Fremont make Nine Mile Canyon a destination for archaeologists and tourists alike.
The canyon became a main transport corridor in the region during the 1880s. Settlers established a number of ranches in Nine Mile, and even a short-lived town named Harper. No longer heavily traveled, the rugged canyon road has until recently been used mostly for recreation and tourism. The discovery of rich deposits of natural gas deep beneath the Tavaputs Plateau has brought an influx of industrial truck traffic over the last few years. Public debate is ongoing about how best to balance energy development in the canyon against the preservation of its cultural resources.
Geography
Nine Mile Canyon runs roughly southwest to northeast, with numerous winding turns, just to the north of the Book Cliffs, and south and east of Ashley National Forest. The full canyon route, through Gate Canyon, connects the towns of Wellington and Myton. Nine Mile Creek, the stream that formed the canyon, is by no means a major body of water. Its importance lies in the fact that it is one of the few water sources in the region that are reliable year-round, and it has been so since prehistoric times. A number of tributary canyons branch off Nine Mile itself, including Argyle Canyon, Cottonwood Canyon, and Dry Canyon. Significant rock art sites are frequently located near the junctions where they meet the main canyon.
Archaeology
It has been conservatively estimated that there are at least 1,000 rock art sites in the canyon, containing a total of more than 10,000 individual images. The true figures may be ten times as high, but there is no question that rock art is more concentrated here than anywhere else in North America. The majority is in the form of pecked petroglyphs, and there are many painted pictographs as well. Researchers have also identified hundreds of ancient pit-houses, rock shelters, and granaries, although only a limited amount of actual excavation has been carried out to date. Many of these structures are located high above the canyon floor on cliff ledges, pinnacles, and mesas. They were built by the Fremont, whose presence in Nine Mile has been dated at AD 950–1250. Indeed, Nine Mile Canyon was one of the locations most heavily occupied by the Fremont. In contrast to the purely hunter-gatherer cultures that surrounded them, the Fremont practiced agriculture, growing corn and squash along the canyon bottom. Unlike some Fremont areas, little pottery is found in Nine Mile, suggesting that beans, which must be boiled for hours to become edible, were not an important part of the local diet. The Fremont left irrigation ditches and earthen lodges on the valley floor that could be seen as late as the 1930s, but are no longer visible after generations of modern cultivation.
By the 16th century the ancestral Utes were in the canyon. They added to the rock art already on the walls, but in styles of their own. For example, many scenes depict Ute hunters on horseback, which date to the 1800s. Despite the impressive quantity of Ute artifacts found in Nine Mile, there is no archaeological evidence of any Ute camps or residences.
History
There is some evidence that American fur trappers may have entered the canyon in the early 19th century, but the first unequivocal sign of a white presence is an inscription on the canyon wall reading "S. Groesbeck August 19 1867". John Wesley Powell's second Colorado River expedition camped at the mouth of the canyon in 1871, and the earliest appearance of the name Nine Mile Canyon is in records of the expedition.
Nine Mile Road was constructed through the canyon in 1886 by the Buffalo Soldiers of the U.S. 9th Cavalry Regiment, linking Fort Duchesne to the railroad through the city of Price. Use of the road surged in 1888 with the discovery of Gilsonite in the Uintah Basin. This was the main transportation route in eastern Utah until well into the 20th century; most of the stagecoach, mail, freight, and telegraph traffic into the Uintah Basin passed through Nine Mile.
The freight trade led to the settlement of the canyon itself. One of the main stagecoach stops developed into a town of sorts. Called Harper, it included a hotel, store, school, and an unofficial post office. It lacked a formal town site, simply taking in a long stretch of scattered ranches and buildings. The community grew gradually from the 1880s until it was officially established as the town of Harper in 1905. The Harper precinct as a whole had a population of 130 at its peak in 1910, but in the early 1920s Harper became a ghost town.
Current issues
Rock art and other ancient artifacts are now protected by law, and although enforcement is difficult, outright looting and malicious vandalism are largely a thing of the past. Nine Mile Canyon's rock art is still at risk, however. Carved and painted mainly on weathered sandstone panels, the images are susceptible to erosion, which is accelerated by touching and by airborne dust. The dust is a special concern as heavy industrial traffic in the canyon increases.
Nine Mile Road, once such an important route, is almost completely unpaved. In fact, it is considered the poorest of the four old military roads in Duchesne County. Difficult to travel as it is, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) designated it as a Scenic Backcountry Byway in 1990. But the road itself no longer limits travel in the canyon as it once did. The rapid proliferation of off-road vehicles has brought new access to the canyon's attractions—and new threats to their survival.
Nine Mile's unique archaeological resources have caused intense debate over land use in recent years. As in many rural areas of the Western United States, land in the canyon is a patchwork of public and private property. Archaeological sites are found on both. Commercially important deposits of minerals and other geological resources have also been discovered, further complicating the issues. Since 2002, the Bill Barrett Corporation, in cooperation with the BLM and private landowners, has been pursuing a natural gas exploration project on the West Tavaputs Plateau in and around the canyon. Government involvement has been controversial, drawing complaints from conservation groups that not enough is being done to protect natural and cultural resources. In 2004, due to concerns about energy development and increasing recreational and tourist traffic, Nine Mile Canyon was named on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of America's Most Endangered Places.
There is also an effort in progress to nominate the canyon district to the National Register of Historic Places.
Further reading
A memoir of a young man's experiences on a Nine Mile Canyon ranch in the 1960s.
External links
- (PDF), brochure with a map and guide
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- at National Scenic Byways Program
- , a group dedicated to the preservation of Nine Mile Canyon
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