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History buffs have wrapped up a three-year project exploring one of Utah's most rugged places, a stretch of the Green River called Desolation Canyon. What they found is evidence of a mysterious people from 1,000 years ago who may have earned a living there but didn't actually live there.
Desolation Canyon is so remote and rugged the only practical way to explore the archaeology is by river.
Dennis Willis, with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, said, "It was one of those kind of things where everybody knew there was a lot of archaeology there, but nobody knew what or where."
About 100 volunteers went through on six river expeditions over the last three years.
Jerry Spangler, with the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance, said, "We went into Desolation not really knowing anything about the archaeology. We now have almost 200 sites documented on the west side of the river alone."
They found burial sites, a few small pit houses and dozens of rock structures for storing grain called granaries. They discovered artifacts and rock art suggesting people of the so-called Fremont culture lived there 1,000 years ago.
In an era before dams were built, the flow of the Green River was wildly unpredictable, so one of the big surprises was evidence deep in the canyon of agriculture.
"But they were growing corn, because we have dozens and dozens of these stone and adobe granaries tucked up in the cliff faces all over the place," Spangler said.
Strangely though, there are no large pit houses and no ancient garbage piles. "There's no evidence they lived there," Spangler said.
The explanation for that mystery may be in the world-famous archaeology site called Range Creek, which is the subject of an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. One theory is that people walked many miles back and forth, growing corn in Desolation Canyon in case they had crop failure in Range Creek.
Although Desolation is almost never visited by anyone but river-runners, the three-year survey showed that modern-day people are taking a toll on the archaeology.
"Got some intentional vandalism and some evidence of people just loving it to death," Willis said.
Government river rangers hope to use the survey data of the last three years to draft a management plan that will protect the canyon's past from present-day users. The survey involved only the west bank of Desolation Canyon. Archaeologists plan to discuss future expeditions with the Ute Indian Tribe, which owns the east bank of the river.
E-mail: hollenhorst@ksl.com