Sand Island Petroglyphs

The sandstone cliff before you has hundreds of petroglyphs (pecked and carved images) on it. These images are estimated to be between 300 and 3,000 years old. This rock art site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a place of ancestral importance to Native Americans.

The Sand Island Petroglyph Panel is located in San Juan County, Utah and was added to the National Register of Historic Places (#81000585) on July 11, 1981.

Newspaper Rock is a petroglyph panel etched in sandstone that records approximately 2,000 years of early human activity. Pre-historic peoples, probably from the Archaic, Basketmaker, Fremont and Pueblo cultures, etched on the rock from B.C. time to A.D. 1300. In historic times, Ute and Navajo people, as well as European Americans made their contributions.

In interpreting the figures on the rock, scholars are undecided as to their meaning or have yet to decipher them. In Navajo, the rock is called “Tse’ Hane’ ” (Rock that tells a story).

Unfortunately, we do not know if the figures represent storytelling, doodling, hunting magic, clan symbols, ancient graffiti or something else. Without a true understanding of the petroglyphs, much is left for individual interpretation.

Newspaper Rock is located on Highway 211 in San Juan County, Utah and was added to the National Register of Historic Places (#76001833) on March 15, 1976.

Newspaper Rock Petroglyph Panel at Indian Creek State Park is an outstanding site, exhibiting some of the finest examples of Ute art work as well as that of earlier cultures. The quality of the carvings is uniformly high, and the wealth of figures provides considerable material for the study of prehistoric and early historic aboriginal cultures. The more recent Ute figures on the panel are believed to date between A.D. 1700 and 1750. The depiction of horses indicates that the panels were probably not done before A.D. 1700 or -even 1750. On the other hand, the fact that the horsemen are using bows and arrows suggests that the carvings were executed ~ before ca. 1850, since bows were probably not the usual weapons utilized after this date.

The chronological position and cultural affiliation of the earlier figures on the panel presents a problem. Despite the fact that Schaafsma (1970) considers evidence which indicates that this may not be the fact, including the assumption (as yet unproven) that archeologists can assign a particular rock art style to a particular culture. At present, there are no known Fremont sites in the Indian Creek drainage. Sites which have been recorded in adjacent areas are generally considered to be Mesa Verde Anasazi. Thus, other archeological evidence would seem to indicate that the earlier figures on Newspaper Rock are either Mesa Verde Anasazi or belong to earlier cultures in the area (Basketmaker II or III).

In addition to it’s significance as an example of aboriginal art, the site has become a model of how to handle major archeological sites in heavily traveled areas. As Schaafsma has noted “If isolation does not protect the site, it is better to bring it right out for all to see, giving the best explanation possible and providing the most effective physical protection available” (1970:58).