Rock Art

As an art teacher, I'm fascinated by ancient petroglyphs and pictographs. Luckily, southeast Utah has tons of it. Naturally my brain is full of little art project ideas I can take back to school. The trick is to get the kids as excited about it as I am.
The Newspaper Rock is on a pull-off on the way to the Needles district of Canyonlands.


While I've hunted down many of the rock art sites in and around Moab, I always seem to read up on more. While leaving we discovered a beautiful hike in a canyon called Courthouse Wash. Couldn't find the rock art there, but my wonderful husband let me dictate some off the beaten path roads up off I-70 well outside of Moab as we headed out of town. We discovered a place called Sego Canyon and the rock art up there was amazing!
This lifesize art is supposedly called the Barrier Canyon style. These are also some of the paintings that cause people to think aliens once inhabited the earth! Scientists guess the panel to be dated from 500 B.C. to around 500 A.D.! Unfortunately someone decided to take bullet practice on it at some point in time... It's still very cool to be driving up in this forgotten land on dirt roads and see rock art panels spanning three different periods of time!