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gericurl76 previously said:
Last summer we went down to a canyon north of Moab that was a private ranch for years and years so the Native American artifacts have been untouched. The Dude that owned it recently passed away and left it to the state. It is currently gated with full-time archeologists working there, but my dad belongs to some indian artifact preservation club, and they pulled some strings and got us in. It was a huge canyon so we didn't have a ton of time (nor did the ranger/archeologist guy seem interested in showing us) to see the really cool stuff, but we saw a bunch of granaries and stone circles where they had permanent structures, and a ton of pictograms/petroglyphs.
My pops was just asking me the other day if I would be interested in a trip to Moab this year to look for some things he's been told about. (I think his Grand Cherokee is too wussy to get where he wants to go) I will try and contact him tomorrow and try to get some ideas about places that might be cool. There are also some ghost towns out west of the great salt lake that we've been to. We've spent a good amount of our summers growing up looking for spanish treasure in the uintahs. His best friends dad was a sheep herder and got caught in a bad downpour up there, and rolled under a large boulder near a river bed to get out of the rain. When his eyes adjusted to the light he saw that it went back and opened up into a cavern. So he crawled back there and found a bunch of spanish conquistador bodies layed out with some cannons and swords and stuff. It freaked him out pretty badly and he never went back. He took something with him though (I don't recall what.) that made his story credible. There were also spanish symbols carved into the Aspen trees all around there (a few years ago we went back and someone has cut them all out with a chainsaw. Just the symbols not the trees, someone is obviously hiding something.) We never found a dang thing besides the symbols.
I think my dad was bitten by the bug as a child. When he was like 9 he was out playing in my grandma's irrigation canal and found 4 spanish gold coins. He has a collection of arrowheads and fossils and a ton of crap he dug up with his metal detector. I think he's kind of a nerd, but he's entertaining to listen to.
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LOL, that's what we do too. I'm working on a project to photograph and document some of these sites for a more comprehensive book than is available now. I've plowed through dozens of books and stories about this stuff. We've spent several seasons adventuring to these sites and this year it's time to bring folks along. I could care less about treasure, it leads to trouble and my treasure is my family. Still, some of those sites are protected by folks unknown and there is a great deal of safety in numbers. There are hundreds of sites with bodies and artifacts like you were discussing. The Spanish documented so many trips and mines in the area that it's patently ridiculous when I hear about the Mormons being the ones to explore and settle the area. There was a great uprising of Indian slaves and the Spanish were driven back, stashing huge ch aches of gold and silver bars, leaving sites like they thought they were returning the very next month. We've found so many fun sites. We also led a trip with Smiggette and Mr. Tibbs around the Salt Lake in a day. We visited all the old ghost and rail towns on the transcontinental railway and I'd love to return! I'm eager to try out my new metal detector lol.
Scott
