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The Great Gallery
of Horseshoe Canyon
by Robert Hitchman
The largest and best panel of
pictographs to be found in the Southwest is on the canyon
walls of the Great Gallery located in Horseshoe
Canyon in the western annex of Canyonlands National Park
in Utah. These are some of the most impressive panels of
ancient artwork in America. To protect the ancient
artwork in Horseshoe Canyon, a small section of the
remote canyon was added to Canyonlands National Park in
1971.
This detached annex of Canyonlands
National Park is located about fifteen miles west of the
Island in the Sky–as the crow flies. If you follow
the paved highways, it’s a long drive from Moab. If
you are planning to visit Capitol Reef National Park or
Bryce Canyon, Horseshoe Canyon is on your route. You can
enter the Horseshoe Canyon Unit from Highway 24, north of
Hanksville, Utah, about fifty miles south of Interstate
70. Turn east on the Horseshoe Canyon Road between mile
posts 136 and 137 and drive the well-graded dirt road
(dry weather only) about twenty-five miles to a junction.
The road is fast and level across a flat, sage-covered
plain. Turn left and drive another five miles to a marked
right turn to the trailhead at the top of a low hill. On
a recent trip to the area, I drove this road with a
two-wheel-drive VW camper and spent the night at the top
of the trail to get an early morning start for the hike
to the Great Gallery. The night sky was very clear and no
moon obscured my star trail photos made from the edge of
the canyon. There are no city lights and no air pollution
out there. There is no fee to use the campground at the
trailhead.
 From the trailhead, it’s a thirty-minute,
mile-and-a-half, eight-hundred-foot-descent into the
bottom of Horseshoe Canyon. This trail was once an old
four-wheel-drive-route and the descent is gradual, not
steep. Turn right at the bottom of the trail and follow
the sandy wash south. There are many large cottonwood
trees growing in the canyon. The trail along the bottom
of the canyon is level, well marked with small piles of
rocks, and is easy to follow. Stay out of the deep soft
sand in the middle of the wash. Listen, as you walk, for
the descending notes of the song of the canyon wren.
It’s almost two miles to the Great Gallery but there
are three other panels along the trail. The first and
only panel on the left or east side of the canyon, is
called the High Panel and needs a 300mm lens to
photograph properly. This is the only place I’ve
ever seen a pictograph of a man with bird’s wings.
The next two panels, the Horseshoe Shelter and the Alcove
Site, are lower and can be photographed with a normal
lens. When you round the final bend in the canyon and
spot the huge red figures on the canyon wall called the
Great Gallery, you will know that you have arrived in a
special place. The early morning sun strikes this wall
first and illuminates dozens of the red ocher images. The
tallest figure stands over twelve feet tall beside a
small dog. Other figures are wearing wildly-patterned
ceremonial dress but have no arms and no legs. Strange
hollow eyes and skull-like heads add a very mysterious
feeling to this place. Intermixed with the large figures
are smaller hunting scenes, animals, and strange
patterns. The large pictographs, the painted figures are
dated back to the Late Archaic Period, from 2000-1000
B.C. The figures are almost thirty feet above the canyon
bottom but several trails lead up onto the pile of talus
at the base of the panel.
While you are hiking and exploring this
isolated desert canyon, you may feel that you are the
first human to walk here. The truth is that people have
been living in these canyons for well over ten thousand
years. The earliest nomadic tribes hunted bison and elk
here. About six thousand years ago, hunters started to
supplement their diets with plants and eventually became
farmers and built permanent dwellings and settlements.
Horseshoe Canyon was originally called Barrier Canyon and
the pictographs, artifacts, and dwellings discovered
there have been dated as being some of the oldest in
America. Because of this, the red ocher paintings on the
canyon walls are called "Barrier Canyon style."
Later styles are called Fremont and Anasazi styles.
Petroglyphs and pictographs depicting the horse were done
after A.D. 1540 when the Spanish arrived and reintroduced
horses to the Americas.
 If you
climb up close to the wall, you can see that many of the
figures were painted on the canyon wall and then
decorated with patterns chipped into the stone surface.
They are both pictographs and petroglyphs. You can
photograph single figures or small groups of the figures
from a distance with a 200-300mm lens. If you climb up
onto the rocks, almost to the base of the panels, you
will be much closer and can use a normal or even a
wide-angle lens to frame the same images. However, when
you move in close, the bottoms of the figures are still
above your head and you will be looking upward at a steep
angle. There will be more distortion in your photographs.
On my morning visits to the Great
Gallery, I have never encountered another person there.
The National Park Service provides a ranger-guided hike
to the panels that leaves the trailhead at 9 A.M. The
panels of the Great Gallery face the southeast and are in
the shade in the afternoon. Bring an 81A filter to warm
up the afternoon’s blue shadows and polarizing
filter to eliminate the sun’s glare on the stone in
the morning.
Nearby Goblin Valley State Park
is definitely worth a visit. The park entrance on Highway
24 is just about a mile north of the entrance into the
Horseshoe Canyon District. Goblin Valley is west of
Highway 24 and Horseshoe Canyon is east of Highway 24.
Goblin Valley’s shallow basin, filled with thousands
of eroded sandstone pillars, is especially fascinating at
sunset. Set up your camera with a wide-angle lens on the
rim of the basin or walk down into the
"goblins." Ask the ranger for directions to the
nearby pictograph panel that includes a human figure
holding a snake.
I prefer to do my travel, explorations,
and photography during the off-season. Winter on the
desert often brings a blanket of snow to red rock canyons
and a white dusting across the sage brush can make a
great photograph. Long hikes are easier when the weather
is cool and there are no crowds in your way. From
mid-March, through April and May, the wildflowers and
cactus begin to bloom and temperatures are usually
perfect. Spring is an excellent time to visit
Canyonlands. June is getting warmer but is probably the
driest month of the year. When the weather warms up, from
late May through the summer, gnats and biting flies can
be a problem, especially when they get in your hair and
bite behind your ears. Carry insect repellent for this
hike. August is the wettest month. Late September,
October, and the first half of November also bring good
weather to southeastern Utah. Motels and other facilities
around Moab are kept busy from mid-March through late
October.
If you are not a camper and prefer to
find a nearby motel, try the Whispering Sands Motel
in Hanksville, Utah. (801) 542-3238. If you are traveling
Interstate 70 between Moab and the Horseshoe Canyon
section of the park, you may need to find a restaurant
that is open in the early morning or late in the evening.
Take the Green River Junction exit off Interstate 70. The
Tamarisk Restaurant serves good food and has a
great view of the Green River. Across the street is the Green
River Visitor Center that’s worth a stop for the
John Wesley Powell Expedition display.
If you are interested in reading more
about photographing Canyonlands National Park or any of
Utah’s other National Parks–or 45 other great
locations around North America, check out PHOTOGRAPH
AMERICA NEWSLETTER by
Robert Hitchman.
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