The Canyon lands in and south of Arches were inhabited by cliff dwellers centuries before the first visits of the Spaniards and fur trappers. Projectile points and other artifacts found in the nearby La Sal and Abajo Mountains indicate occupation by aborigines during the period from about 3000-2000 B.C. to about A.D. 1 (Hunt, Alice, 1956). The Fremont people occupied the area around A.D. 850 or 900, and the Pueblo or Anasazi people from about A.D. 1075 to their departure in the late 12th century (Jennings, 1970). Most of the evidence for these early occupations has been found in and south of Canyonlands National Park (Lohman, 1974), but some traces of these and possibly earlier cultures have been found also within Arches National Park.
Ross A. Maxwell (National Park Service, written commun., 1941) investigated two caves in the Entrada Sandstone in the upper reaches of Salt Wash that contain Anasazi ruins. He mentioned that perhaps a dozen or more other caves should be checked for evidence of former occupation and, also, that he found several ancient campsites littered with flint chips and broken tools.
One cave Maxwell explored some 5 miles north of Wolfe Ranch and north of the park is about 300 feet long and 100 to 150 feet deep. It contains the remains of one or more ruins of a structure he thought may have covered much of the floor. The remaining parts of walls now are only two to four tiers of stones in height, although originally they may have been more than one story high. Maxwell explored a second cave on the east side of Salt Wash, about 2 miles north of Wolfe Ranch, which contains 16 storage cists of adobe.
The faces of many older sandstone cliffs or ledges are darkened by desert varnish--a natural pigment of iron and manganese oxides. The prehistoric inhabitants of the Plateau learned that effective and enduring designs, called petroglyphs, could be created simply by chiseling or pecking through the thin dark layer to reveal the buff or tan sandstone beneath. Most petroglyphs were created by the Anasazi, but those showing men mounted on horses were done by Ute tribesmen after the Spaniards brought in horses in the 1500's. The Fremont people and some earlier people painted figures on rock faces, called pictographs, and some of these had pecked outlines.
