Roadside Petroglyphs – Moab
Moab is a town filled with amazing outdoor adventures. Arches National Park gets most of the attention but there are a ton of smaller parks and trails that are nearby and have some great hiking. On my way to one of those spots, the Poison Spider Trailhead, I saw a small sign on the side of with a simple word, Petroglyphs, and an arrow pointing to the rock wall on the side of the wall. Surely, they couldn’t be this close to the road? Spoiler, they were this close to the road. Hence the name the Roadside Petroglyphs.
I pulled my car into a small parking spot on the side of Potash Road and immediately saw the faint carvings on the wall. The wall isn’t small either. It is a gigantic rock wall that stretches to the sky. The more I looked at the giant red rock, the more shapes started to take shape. People, animals, a hand. Shapes and designs made up this extensive collection.
Where did they come from?
The Roadside Petroglyphs in Moab are close to the Colorado River that runs through the area. According to the infographic at the site, there are spots all along the area that contain either petroglyphs or pictographs. The petroglyphs are unique in that they have been carved or chiseled into the wall, while pictographs are painted. The sign says that experts believe these to be from two cultural periods, the Archaic (6,000-1,000 B.C.) and the Fremont (450-1300 A.D).
There are scenes of animal like and human like art that is placed on different parts of the wall. Some seem to be depicting hunts of certain animals, such as deer. Others may show gatherings of other sorts. The experts, definitely not me, can decipher what different era the work comes from based on the shapes used. To me, it was just some amazing stories that have been passed through time.
The Petroglyphs
These petroglyphs covered most of one wall and even wrapped around the side. There was damage to the wall in certain places caused by recent vandals. There were also some bore holes from when structures were built on the roadside. But for the most part, the images are easily recognizable.
The more I looked, the more I saw. Some of the images have faded, some are near cracks that hide them. Some stand out. A few you will see immediately and think you have seen them all. Then you will let your eyes adjust and see a few more, and then even more. The longer I stayed, the more I enjoyed following along to the stories written on this wall.
It made me wonder how many people have seen these messages stuck in time. How many more drove right by without ever knowing they were there? The more I looked the more I thought I could understand a few of them. A great hunt? The passage of time? I guess we will never know for sure but that didn’t stop me from trying to read this language or shapes.
The Social Media of it’s Time?
I started to wonder if these walls were the message boards of their time. Did people stop by everyday to see a new story like we do with our phones? Were they just a few people trying to preserve knowledge or was it something that everyone around participated in.
Now that we are in an age of constant communication, will any of it show up in 2-10,000 years to let the future people know what we were doing in our world? Or will it all disappear or be lost to technology? I wonder if these carvings will actually still be around for those future people to see, while they wonder what happened after this time.
For now, I will take the comfort in knowing that people still wanted to record their lessons, their history even so long ago. That storytelling was being developed before the words made it to paper and were locked in the shapes that we still see on the walls today.
Finding the Roadside Petroglyphs in Moab
The Roadside Petroglyphs are located on Potash Road, RTE 273 just across the river from the main town. There are a few small areas to park but no restroom facilities.
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