In a remote and rugged canyon 120 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, in an area known as Range Creek, archeologists revealed an ancient American Indian settlement virtually untouched and kept secret for decades. Range Creek has archeologists amazed by the unprecedented amount of artifacts and dwelling remnants located there, which they say once belonged to the Fremont, a tribe of American Indians who lived in central Utah circa A.D. 500-1300.
Kevin Jones, archeologist with the state History and Preservation Office, estimates Range Creek may have as many as 1,000 sites of archeological importance, some of which stand just as they were 700 years ago.
The preservation that Range Creek contains is owed to Waldo Wilcox, a stubborn 74-year-old retired rancher who kept artifact hunters off the land. Wilcox said he was just a boy when he first went up to Range Creek in 1941. "I know I was the first gringo up there because the arrowheads were still there," he said.
In 1951 Wilcox bought the 4,200-acre Range Creek ranch and built a homestead on it, where he made a living raising cattle in the canyon for 51 years with his wife and children. As to why he wanted to live on Range Creek, Wilcox said, "I wanted to be left alone and I wanted the ground to be left alone."
Wilcox recalled one time he met a woman who tried to enter the Range Creek land. "I wanted to get in there but those damn Wilcox wouldn't let me in," Wilcox recalled the woman said. The woman next asked Wilcox, "Who are you?" Wilcox replied with a laugh, "I'm one of those damn Wilcox."
Wilcox dedicated much of his life to keeping "hounds" of the land, but the natural geography of the site also was beneficial, sheltering the Fremont settlements. Range Creek is hidden away in the Book Cliff region of Carbon and Emory Counties, and getting to it takes a two-hour journey in four-wheel-drive vehicles over a rutted logging road that skirts along steep mountainside drop-offs.
Once inside the canyon, intricately carved rock art sites depict serpents, bighorn sheep, and hunters with bows.
All along Range Creek, one can find remnants of pit house villages where the Fremont dwelled.
The hogan-like pit houses were constructed of large stone blocks dug one to two feet into the ground. The pit house roof was framed with juniper logs and covered with dirt and grass, making them energy efficient.
The ground around each pit house is littered with countless sherds of pottery fragments, some of which still have visible lines of blue, red and yellow paint. Corn cobs found in the area are 1,000 years old, according to carbon-dating tests.
The most visible structures of Range Creek are the adobe grain storage holds found high on the cliff ledges. These granaries, some of which are 5 feet tall, were built in places that offered protection from water, rodents and raiding tribes, according to archeologists.
Many granaries still hold the corn and wheat they were stocked with.
Also found in abundance are chippings of obsidian and other rocks that the Fremont used to make blades and arrowheads.
Joel Boomgarden, a U graduate student majoring in archeology said, "Making tools creates an unbelievable amount of waste rocks."
While picking up a perfect fingernail-sized arrowhead off the ground, Boomgarden said, "They left the arrowhead because they were done with it."
Boomgarden also said a great deal of knowledge can be found by searching through Fremont trash pits, known to archeologists as "middens."
Strangely, the Fremont tribe did not exist in Range Creek for very long, evidenced by the lack of garbage.
According to Jones and others, the Fremont vanished from history. "One of the big questions is, 'What happened here around 1300 A.D.?' They all disappeared," Jones said. He reasoned that several things may have become of the Fremont. They might have starved to death, been absorbed by a neighboring tribe or even become cannibals. "We know they had huge droughts," Jones said. Jones also points to the granaries that are built in such hard to reach places that they are only accessible by rope or ladder. "The defensive posture of the granaries indicate the Fremont were in a state of warfare. They put their food up to protect it from outsiders."
In order to determine the strange disappearance of the Fremont, many summers will be spent on the site. "I feel like I've had 20 years of work dropped in my lap," said Duncan Metcalfe, curator of archeology at the U's Natural History Museum.
Right now, access to Range Creek is only allowed by hiking or horseback. Metcalfe said that if all-terrain vehicles were allowed in the area, the damage would be immediate and far-reaching. "Allowing ATVs would have a huge impact," he said. "Within the first year, all surface artifacts would be gone. Five years, potholes; 20 years, it would not be worth my time."
Metcalfe's concern for the area's protection is just as big as his vision for the area. He sees Range Creek as a resource for more than just its archeological secrets. "I would love to see this turned into a research station. I'd love to bring in classes from the University of Utah for landscape painting [and] nature writing."
Metcalfe, who has worked the site for more than two years, said archeology is a two-part job which involves working and living on site.
Sarah Grant, a U archeology undergraduate who has worked on site since June 5, said she and fellow students camp in tents and take baths in Range Creek-which, according to the Trust for Public Land, has one of the largest black bear populations in the state.
Grant said some of the students' daily activities on top of archeology work include digging irrigation ditches for fire safety and occasionally fighting wildfires, which break out in the canyon.
Up high on the canyon walls, a wildfire smoldered, set off by lightning the night before. Last summer, a fire swept through parts of the canyon, forcing the students to leave camp for a few days.
"All the archeology students tried to put it out, but it got too big," Grant said.
That fire actually proved to be less of an interruption and more beneficial to the students. "The fire tore all the brush away and we found some more sites and pit-house structures," Grant said.
Last year's working budget for the Range Creek site was $35,000, which Metcalfe called "a very doable level of funding."
"The money this year has allowed me to hire a ranch security guard," Metcalfe said. The guard drives the 12-mile stretch twice a day, keeping a sharp lookout for artifact pirates.
Looting has always posed a problem for preserving artifacts, Jones said. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, trainloads of ancient artifacts were removed from the western states and taken to Europe.
Because of the looting problem, Jones and other archeologists are concerned about how to share the site with the public and protect it at the same time.
"If everyone in Utah came down here, it would be loved to death," Jones said.
"When people start coming in, things start disappearing," Boomgarden said. "The only way to keep people from trashing it is to keep them out. This site we are on has been looted in the last week and a half."
Right after the discovery of Range Creek was given to the press, three suspicious hikers were seen on the site. Later, several pieces came up missing-a half-jar and three Fremont knife blades.
Grant said the archeologists at Range Creek only take artifacts that can be diagnostically analyzed for information. The majority of what they find they record, plot the location and leave it on the ground where it was found. "Everything else we keep here. This is their home," Grant said.
Federal law prohibits anyone from taking anything from the site, but the archeologists can't keep the public out of the area because it is public land.
Boomgarden said that the few that come to steal artifacts do "enormous" amounts of damage. Pottery hunters will kick over walls and dig trenches sometimes as deep as 9 feet in search of artifacts. "It's not worth taking...$20 for an arrowhead. That arrowhead is worth more to us."
Wilcox, who once had the most to lose as owner of the ranch, said he held up his end of the agreement with state and federal agencies, keeping the public off the site, and has now washed his hands off the whole deal.
In 2002, Wilcox sold the ranch to the federal government and the state of Utah for $2.5 million, under the agreement that the land would be protected and remain undeveloped. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources now owns the Range Creek parcel, according to Larry Dalton, a UDWR official.
Wilcox said he was getting too old to keep watch over the ranch. "I knew the state could do a better job protecting the area and when I die, I don't want no damn hippie digging me up. We made a deal and I took it. Right or wrong, I took it."
Wilcox is glad that he sold the land but feels "homesick" when he remembers some of the exciting discoveries and fun trips he made. Wilcox said he once saw several bodies at Ranch Creek that he described as mummified Indians. The bodies were taken by some other ranchers and donated to a museum in Phoenix. "I've never dug up an Indian but I've seen 'em dug up. And they say Indians are buried with treasure, but they didn't have any treasure. They was headed for the happy hunting grounds. They didn't need any of that stuff."
Wilcox said he once hosted mountain lion hunts in the area. One time in 1961, George and Rushton Kennedy came out to Utah for the hunt. Wilcox knew of a rock wall where an old human skull was hidden away. "Once we had some of Ethel Kennedy's brothers out here and one of the women said, 'I'd love to find a jug.' And I said, 'Well, I know a place back in a hole.' And she reached in and grabbed a skull and pulled it out and she about died."
Wilcox said that protecting the Indian artifacts was important to him, but he wasn't that interested from an archeological perspective. "I didn't have time to look at that stuff. If I didn't take care of the cows, I wouldn't eat. It was a rugged place to make a living, but I loved every minute of it."
As Wilcox turns the final page of his life in the Book Cliff region, he anticipates the story finishing with a tragic ending.
"They are going to come in here and destroy it all," he said.
ntyler@chronicle.utah.edu
