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EAGLE MOUNTAIN — A hillside in Eagle Mountain will look a lot different this time next year.
Not only because R.K. Builders, a Utah development company, is planning to build a 300-unit community in the area, but also because it plans to construct a park around ancient art that workers found on the land.
The company discovered about a dozen individual petroglyphs eight years ago when workers surveyed the area for a development project.
Since then, Ryan Kent, owner of R.K. Builders, has been working with Eagle Mountain city officials to develop plans for a park built around the ancient art.
"We really want to bring attention to the rock art and it's something we are very proud of," Kent said.
In hopes of understanding the artifacts, the company hired a team of experts to interpret the find.
"They tried to date them but there are some differing opinions," Kent said. "The consensus is that it looks like the petroglyphs are at least a couple of thousand years old."
He believes some of the pieces are easy to interpret while others are hard to spot.
"They differ from, you know, an etching of a sun, to something that looks like a deer. There is an eagle to something that looks to me like a flower."
The park will cost the development company $150,000 to construct. It will include short fencing around the art, trails, interpretive signage and security cameras. Steve Mumford, Eagle Mountain planning director, said the discovery and plans for the park will add to the already growing area.
"They are priceless artifacts and have been here for thousands of years," Mumford said. "We want to make sure that development doesn't just destroy or damage them."
Developers have several phases planned to construct the park and hope to complete it by spring 2017. They said their biggest challenge is to keep the area authentic, making it look like it did thousands of years ago.
"We hope through this process we can find out more and be able to include that on the interpretive signage and educate our residents," Mumford said.
Eagle Mountain city officials are not disclosing the location of the petroglyphs in order to protect them from being tampered with by the public.
