Ancestral Peoples
The Paleo-Indian cultures lived in this area
as far back as 11,500 B.C. Their descendants, the Desert Archaic people,
also hunted and gathered here, and by about 1000 B.C. began to grow corn. As
agriculture became more important to these people, they gave up their
nomadic ways and developed permanent settlements. The culture that planted
crops and built villages is called the ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi). By
about A.D. 1100, there was ancestral Puebloan occupation in the Needles
District of Canyonlands. The ruins around Salt Creek are evidence of small
settlements.
The Fremont people, whose origins are more
obscure, lived across the Colorado River to the northwest of the ancestral
Puebloans. Both groups left their mark on Canyonlands. In all three areas of
the park, there are scenes of hunting and harvesting, stylized figures and
abstract designs left by ancient artists working in stone for purposes that
remain unclear.
For about 200 years, the Fremont and ancestral
Puebloan peoples cultivated crops in canyon bottoms and left rock art on
canyon walls, but this was not to be a permanent home for them. A 20-year
drought in the 13th century forced these groups to leave Canyonlands in
search of more favorable living conditions.
Explorers and Ranchers
For the next several hundred years,
Canyonlands remained little used. Native people may have hunted in the area.
It was probably not until the 1800s that the first Europeans entered
Canyonlands. In 1836, fur trapper Denis Julien traveled through this rugged
country. Several more efforts to explore the area followed shortly
thereafter. In 1859, Captain John N. Macomb entered Canyonlands in order to
locate the confluence of the Green and the Grand rivers (as the Colorado
River was then called), to chart the course of the San Juan River and to
determine the most direct route from the Rio Grande of New Mexico to the
small towns of southern Utah. John Wesley Powell explored the area by river
in 1869 and again in 1871. Powell's expeditions resulted in the first
detailed geologic and topographic information on this area
By 1885, cattle ranching was becoming a big
business in southeast Utah, and cattle were beginning to graze in
Canyonlands itself. Some of the descendants of ranchers who were running
cattle operations in Canyonlands during the last century are still in
residence today.
In the 1950s and 1960s, prospectors explored
Canyonlands for uranium deposits. Bulldozed roads crisscrossed the
landscape, and several deep shafts were dug. Although ore was found, the
yields were not worth the effort required to extract it. In September 1964,
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation preserving Canyonlands as a
national park for the enrichment of generations to come.
(from the National Park
website)