Nine Mile Canyon

Some Notes from Nine Mile Canyon, Utah

Fall break was up from the University, and in exchange for starting school at the near beginning of August, we got the entire week off. although this means longer hours of work, we were able to make a several day trip through Nine Mile Canyon outside of Price, Utah, and up to the Flaming Gorge area for some camping.

Inside Nine Mile Canyon, it was obvious that we were not the first people to visit there. The Fremont culture, some 1000 years ago, had turned the canyon into a 40 mile long art gallery with thousands of petroglyphs, like the one below.

Some time more recently, Halliburton or some such had discovered oil in said canyon, and proceeded to cover up all these petroglyphs with a fine layer of dust from the heavily-trafficed dirt road. Although you are no longer at risk from being ambushed by Butch Cassidy and his gang (who used to frequent the area), you might get run over by a storming white diesel truck. But no matter. It would take many trips to fully catalog all the petroglyphs in the area.

View a gallery of Fremont era petroglyphs from Nine Mile Canyon.

Most of the petroglyphs are some variation on the "man shoot goat" theme, but there are some exciting scorpions, centipedes, and cobwebs all ready for Halloween. There was also a fair amount of cowboyglyphs such as what I assume is a steam train and house.

The canyon is also home to a large deer picograph, located in an alcove and probably used as target practice for seven hundred years before someone painted a misspelled private property warning directly over it. Other sites include the remenants of a Fremont pit house and many granaries, if you can find them.

See a illustrated photo of several Fremont granaries.

You cannot camp in Nine Mile Canyon, so we drove up Gate Canyon to the north, and camped on a bluff looking south. Below is a view from our campsite that next morning.

View a sunrise panorama overlooking Nine Mile Canyon and Gate Canyon, Utah.

Nine Mile Canyon | Flaming Gorge