South Gate Petroglyphs - Zion National Park - Springdale, UT
N 37° 12.247 W 112° 59.217
12S E 323673 N 4119365
This is the easiest rock art site to get to in Zion National Park. As such it has suffered from abuse by visitors defacing the rock. Please do not touch the rock.
Waymark Code: WMT9ER
Location: Utah, United States
Date Posted: 10/19/2016
Views: 7
Look for a single; flat rock located about fifty-yards east of the parks south entrance. There is a small NPS sign by the petroglyph inscribed rock. Of most interest in this rock is that it is an ancient summer solstice marker. The date to watch is June 21st, when a rock from above will cast its shadow upon the rock. The shadow is said to resemble the "open jaw of a coyote."
The panel contains about a dozen images with a spiral and a Zoomorph being most prominent.
The NPS has done its best to restore the rock to its original appearance.
I believe the Petroglyphs in Zion belong to the Fremont culture. Wikipedia describes the Fremont culture as a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah where the first Fremont sites were discovered by local Native Americans known as Utes and Navajo.
The Fremont are sometimes thought to have begun as a splinter group of the Ancestral Pueblo people, although archaeologists do not agree on this theory.
According to archaelogist Dean Snow they were part-time farmers who lived in scattered semi-sedentary farmsteads and small villages, never entirely giving up traditional hunting and gathering for more risky full-time farming.
Type of Pictograph: Petroglyph
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Visit Instructions:1. You may log as many different waymarks as you wish but you may only log each one once.
2. You must include a close up photo of the pictograph and your GPSr. The pictograph must be recognizable.
3. Tell a little bit about what you learned of the area.
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