Ghosts Of The High Desert

Indexado: 2026-05-17

[00:00:01]In today's episode, I'm going deep into the back country of Utah to a barrier canyon pictograph [music] site. Barrier Canyon rock art is among the oldest rock art in the inner mountain west and may date back as far as the [music] ice age.

[00:00:16]This site I'm going to is special to me because this is a site that I stumbled across [music] as a kid when it was up a lone wash out in southern Utah. Now, [music] it has a road and access to it, and it's well known. But when I first found it, this was the literally the first rock [music] art I ever encountered in my life, and I stumbled across it myself. We're going to check this [music] out. We're also going to see some uranium mines and big horn sheep, and we're going to get deep into the back country and [music] have a good time. So, come along with me and let's go ahead and see this amazing ancient [music] barrier canyon rock art.

[00:00:55]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Hey.

[00:01:45][music] Good crap.

[00:02:00]Look at this. Look at this landscape.

[00:02:04]I got to turn around and show you this.

[00:02:07]Just look at this. There. [music] This does not do justice.

[00:02:11]Big sky country. Look at this red rock, this white rock, this green rock. This is breathtaking. This life, this world is so magnificent. It is exquisitly beautiful.

[00:02:28]We make these cities, these seas of gray rectangles. The natural beauty of this planet is is shockingly gorgeous. I mean, this is just mineral and plant.

[00:02:42]And we have such such rich beauty. I wish you could see this in person. These mountains are bigger than you think.

[00:02:49]These hills are bigger than you think.

[00:02:50]And this landscape is bigger than you think. And it is breathtaking. I wish I wish you could see it. And I hope this gives you a little bit of a sense of it cuz this is just stunning. Absolutely stunning. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> This area where I'm at now, it's it's really pretty. [music] You see these green uh sediments behind me and you see probably some holes. We're going to take a look at these. We're going to fly a drone up here and we're going to take a fly a drone over also to some old cabins. And you know when you think about miners and prospectors, people think about mining for gold or silver or even iron. Not here. They were mining for uranium. This is actually part of the big uranium boom in the atomic age when every was like we got to get uranium. We're doing all these radioactive experiments and uranium is the future. It's kind of crazy. So I haven't been to this canyon since I was like again like 10 11 years old. And I went in one of these mines back here and I came out and I clunked my head hard and got got a little bit of damage from that. And so it's kind of fun coming back here. I'm like, "Oh yeah, I remember that." And I remember why I forgot that. Uh but it's fun to explore these places, but it's also dangerous.

[00:04:27]So it's risky going in mines, but you know, when you're a kid, you're an idiot and you just like to go explore. But people, this this area was just so desolate and so it still is. It's still risky to be out here. uh you know, no self-service and and you know, who knows when the next person's going to pass by?

[00:04:44]Looks like there's a little camp of wondering if it's might be some scouts or something in the area. Uh that's kind of cool that people are still coming out here and seeing this beautiful area. But again, people what drives people to come through? People pass through this area before because these washes had water and that brought game and that was a place to hunt and live. And nowadays, people come out here for adventure and to see the natural beauty. And somewhere in between, people were hacking apart the mountains trying to dig uranium out.

[00:05:10]Well, let's go ahead and let's take the drone up. We're going to take a look at some of these holes in the mountain where people were digging out uranium.

[00:05:16]And we're also going to take a look at some of these cabins that these people lived in less than 100 years ago.

[00:05:21][music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat.

[00:05:51][music] Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> As I approach these cabins, I can't help but see the comparison that these are [music] made out of the same materials as the ancestral PBLO ruins that I often visit. There's not much adobe, but you still [music] have the stacking of local sandstone and timbers [music] huned down to make beams.

[00:07:13]But seeing these, even though these were crafted, people lived here.

[00:07:18]But these were people who were in a rush. They were [music] trying to get their uranium and make some money. The craftsmanship [music] is still pretty good though. But it's amazing to think that these ruins are not even quite 100 years old and yet they've already succumb [music] to the land. It's important to remember this that when we see the ancient Pbloan sites to remember that they are much older and have outlasted [music] because those people were building homes. These people were just building structures to live in while they did mining for uranium.

[00:08:00]But so much can change so fast. What we think is [music] permanent might not last more than a few years after we leave.

[00:08:27]>> [music] >> Hello everybody, Ben Wood here and in today's video we're visiting a rock art panel.

[00:08:39]a pictograph painted panel that is barrier canyon style. Barrier Canyon is the style I get most excited about. It may date back all the way to the ice age. This style, this site also has Fremont petetroglyphs which are are pictoraphs which are much more recent.

[00:08:54]I'm going to get into that in a minute, but this site is very special to me.

[00:08:58]These are the first rock art I've ever seen in my life. I was a kid and nowadays there's a paved road coming through here and I came in here with a group of scouts and we parked and we're camped way out there and it was just a wash back then. I mean literally this wash would get washed out if it was too wet you can go in it sometimes years it would just get washed away and you were stuck. So we were up there about a mile and I just came walking down this wash and to me this is the middle of nowhere.

[00:09:24]This is wilderness. Now, we're really actually close to um the mountains, the Henry Mountains, which were so remote, they were the last place to get mapped in the continental United States. It's pretty cool. So, this actually is pretty remote, but I felt that this was the most amazing canyon. And I went walking down here and I came around this corner and I looked up there and I saw these beautiful pictures, these beautiful paintings painted on the rock and my stupid child mind thought, I wonder, am I the first person to see these in thousands of years? I was like, no. And then I noticed that there were bullet holes on some of them. So clearly not.

[00:10:02]And [snorts] this has been a wellrecoognized site forever. It's a beautiful site. and and now they have these these wooden barriers up to try to encourage people to not get by here, but people used to camp right in where we're standing. Uh, you know, later after my childhood, people would do that. They bring up RVs up here. But this is a very beautiful site and it's pictographic, which means it's painted as opposed to chiseled into the rock. Now, usually in most cultures, they start and they have chiseling into the rock and then later on you have painting. But this barrier canyon style out of the blue, bam, you have you have pictographs painted, they're beautiful, they're ghostly, they're strange, they're unique. But the other weird thing about the site is off to the side, we also have some Fremont uh pictographs. Fremonts did not normally do pictographs. They did petroglyphs. They chiseled into rock.

[00:10:53]The assumption would be that the the Fremonts when they came into this area thousands of years later saw these big old beautiful barrier canyon pieces and they thought, "Wow, this is special.

[00:11:06]Let's kind of replicate our version of this and paint as well." The sad thing is that the the the the natural erosion of this rockside has done a lot to cause damage and to make it flake off. Also, people back in the day shot at these, which is horrific to think that people were just shooting at these for target practice. Uh, they're falling off, but this whole panel behind me used to have pictographs. And if you go up to it, you can see there's residue left from them.

[00:11:35]We'll never know exactly what they said.

[00:11:37]Now, that panel up there, that ridge, this wash has has eroded down and washed out. Now, it could have been at one time when these earlier pieces were made, it may have been that that was the actual height of the canyon. Uh, but it also could be that right that base where the people stood on, that may have eroded away down to where now it's very dangerous to try to go up to it. We're going to take a look around at this site. We're going to take some drone shots. We're going to zoom in and I'm going to talk a little bit more about it and uh just kind of do a voice over.

[00:12:07]It's pretty windy and I'm hoping you can hear of over the wind hitting my mic.

[00:12:12]But again, this is the first rock art that I ever saw in my life, and it's a pleasure to share it with you. So, let's go ahead and check it out.

[00:12:22]It's really neat, actually, to be walking up to the site and to think about little kid Ben Woodruff walking on the same path.

[00:12:32]I don't know. I was like 10, 11 years old.

[00:12:37]Now I'm what, 46, 47, something like that. Who knows? And I just came around this corner and I looked up here and I saw these and these impacted me.

[00:12:54]They kind of reached out and touched my soul in a way that uh nothing ever has since. You know, there were more along here [snorts] and they've sadly fallen down.

[00:13:08]Here they are. Right here.

[00:13:11]That's the first time, you know, when I was a kid, I was obsessed with ancient Egypt. And it was so far away. It was so distant and so exotic.

[00:13:21]And then when I saw this for the first time, it just what? My own state. My own state had this rich history. It's like, well, of course it did. There's deep rich history everywhere. But I didn't know that. And this was kind of my first awakening to that fact. This site is what sparked my interest in studying the ancient world and ancient peoples and trying to have a better understanding of the past. And I love Barrier Canyon style because of all the rock art styles in the Southwest, Barrier Canyon seems to reach out to people in a way that transcends what other styles do. Every time you see rock art, you can ponder what did these people think? Who were they? Why did they depict this? uh what was their story? You can do that with everything, but Barrier Canyon does something different. When you see it in person, it impacts you in a very special and a very different way. I've talked about this in other videos, but it's very similar to what happens if you see Aboriginal art in Australia. There's something ghostly and different that connects you and pulls you in in a way that no other rock art does. And I don't mean to sound kind of woo woo and metaphysical about it, but it is it is it has it's different than anything anything older, anything newer. There's something very special about it. And this is this is where I got the bug for ancient history was right here. This panel, you know, decades ago. It's wild to be here again.

[00:14:54]Now, if you look up there, there's a snake man, a man holding a snake. Nobody ever points that out, but that seems to be very consistent. We see that very often with the barrier canyon style. We often see a humanoid picture holding one or two what appears to be snakes. It seems that there's another one here. If you look closely, this isn't the best footage, but that figure right in the dead center there, it looks like, you know, most of it's falling off, unfortunately, but it looks as though that figure maybe at one time was also holding a snake. And you can see the panel keeps going and it's fading away.

[00:15:35]You know, it said if you see these streaks up above, mud and and sediment kind of wash this away and cause natural erosion. But again, there used to be panels over here. And when I was a kid, you could see them and people had shot them up.

[00:15:52]And all you have left is this Fremont image and this Fremont spiral. And you can see just right here, right there, there's a little little tiny fleck left.

[00:16:04]There's little bits and pieces, but all along this ridge, you look at what it would take to get up. Now, you know, you could scramble up here. Uh this would not be safe to get up.

[00:16:15]You could do it. You know, I could do it, but it it would it would be it would be gnarly. And but these these pieces are are flaking off and they're breaking off down below. And they have been for the past several thousand years. And so maybe that would have been easier to get up in the old days and a little safer to leave an image on than it is now.

[00:16:37]But what compelled people to do this? I I desperately wish I knew who these people were. How old did they live? How old were they when they did these? Were these all done within a year of each other? Were these done a thousand years apart? Barrier Canyon style is said to go back potentially all the way to the ice age.

[00:17:01]We don't know. You know, it goes, you know, some from somewhere between 2,000 years to 10,000 years. That's a long time. These panels could have been painted on top of each other. We know that this other one over here, this guy would have been, you know, some, you know, like around 1,200 years ago, give or take Fremont, pretty recent. But these could be anywhere from 2,000 to 7 8 9 10,000 years ago. And they could have been painted over each other.

[00:17:28]There's some that are lighter and there's some that are darker. That might just be natural erosion. How did they make these? The most common understanding of how pictoraphs were painted is that you take granulized hide glue, raw hide. You grind it up into a powder. You heat it up to an almost a boil and then you mix natural earth pigments which will not fade in with the hide glue and you paint it on. So it's both a glue and a paint. If you just put natural paints on, water and solar radiation going to destroy it. These things last because of the resiliency of making something inorganic like the the the rock and mineral pigments with something organic like hide glue. But it's just so brilliant to see it here.

[00:18:10]The canyon here is kind of a natural wash and you can see that it just comes through the rain and what used to be rivers just flow through here and you can see just the erosion. See all these rocks? These rocks used to be the sight of this cliff. It's just breaking away, breaking away, breaking away. The conquest of time. [music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:18:59][music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:19:53][music] [music] >> [music] >> Well, I hope you enjoyed coming along on this journey with me, revisiting my own past and seeing the place that was the birthplace of my desire to connect with the ancient past. And I hope you enjoyed [music] seeing these beautiful barrier canyon panels. [snorts] If you haven't already, if you could hit subscribe to my channel, I very [music] much appreciate it. And always remember that life is a gift. So never stop learning and never stop exploring. We'll see you next time.