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Several centuries ago Native Americans traveling through the area stopped and pecked designs onto the smooth faces of large boulders found on the east side of the gap. Over the years many of the boulders have been covered with these chiseled figures known as petroglyphs. Archaeologists debate that they represent concepts, ideas or actual happenings. Perhaps they were part of a religious activity or hunting ritual. The local Native Americans consider them to be an important part of their cultural history relating stories of their ancestors’ life ways. The Parowan Gap Petroglyphs are listed on the National Register of Historic Places signifying its importance as a cultural treasure.

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The Parley Pratt Expedition discovered the petroglyphs at Parowan Gap in 1849. The pass is a classic example of a wind gap, an unusual geological landform marking where an ancient river cut a 600-foot-deep notch through the mountain. Native Americans used this ancient gap for thousands of years to provide easy passage through the Red Hills.

          The north wall of Parowan Gap contains a huge gallery of Native American rock art. Most petroglyph sites contain figures of humans and animals. This petroglyph site contains many deeply inscribed geometric forms, along with some humans and animals. The most interesting feature of this site is a very large and deeply inscribed petroglyph known as the "Zipper". Many archaeologists believe the "Zipper" is a composite map (space) and numerical calendar (time).

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Neil M. Judd, of the Smithsonian Institute who began work on the Paragonah site in 1915, notes

the observations of even earlier researchers like Dr. H. C. Yarrow (1872) that over 400 mounds

were observable at Paragonah. Henry Montgomery, University of Utah, and Don Maquire, “of

Ogden, Utah” conducted excavations in 1893 and report about 100 mounds. Less than half of

these remained when Judd worked the site (Judd 1).

Where did the community come from and where did it go? These are question that remain

unanswered. Judd addressed it thus: “Here was a people who came from some distant,

undetermined region—a people that established a compact community, with a definite social

organization, and then passed on to a new locality where another cycle in their tribal history was

unfolded” 

But while they were here, they built marvelous structures. One mound, the “big mound,” had a

diameter of 225 feet and was some 10 feet high (Judd 3). The walls averaged 10” in thickness

and, while no fully intact wall was excavated they were judged to be 4.5’ to 5’ tall, based on

other excavations of the Southwest. Yet, Judd included a caution to his readers. He did not

want them believing that the height of the walls were an indication of the height of the

inhabitants but, rather, to understand that the structures were used, primarily, for storage and

sleeping.

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The Mule Canyon is an ancestral puebloan ruin located on Cedar Mesa in Southeastern Utah.  Well preserved Pueblo surface ruins found at this site are over 700 years old. The ruin complex includes above-ground and underground dwellings: a kiva and tower which have been excavated and stabilized as well as a block of twelve rooms. 

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The People

Anasazi is the name given to the prehistoric Indians who inhabited the Four Corners Area from approximately 1 to 1300 A.D. Anasazi is a Navajo word meaning "ancient one" or "enemy ancestor". We do not know what the Anasazi called themselves.

The Anasazi had no formal system of writing, and therefore left no written record of their culture or appearance. What we know today about the Anasazi is derived from archaeological research. Much of the information was gathered through the excavation of sites such as Mule Canyon Ruin, and by studying the modern day Pueblo Indians of the Southwest. Archaeologist now generally agree that the modern day Hopi Indians of northeastern Arizona and the Zia, Sandia, Jemez, Taos, and Zuni Indians of northcentral New Mexico are at least partially descendants of the Anasazi.

From skeletal analysis and comparison, it is surmised that the Anasazi were similar in appearance to the modern Pueblo Indians. The Anasazi were short by today's standards; the men averaged about five feet, four inches tall (some were over six feet tall), and the women averaged about five feet tall. Their skin was dark brown, hair was black, and they probably had brown eyes. Though small in height, they were most likely a very strong and sturdy people.

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Butler Wash Ruin is a cliff dwelling that was built and occupied by the Ancestral Puebloans, sometimes known as Anasazi, in about 1200 AD. Parts of the site has been stabilized and reconstructed, but most of it remains as it was found in the 1800s. There are habitation, storage and ceremonial structures, including four kivas.  This ruin is located in a side canyon of Butler Wash, on the east side of Comb Ridge.

This is great! Sad thing is Parowan Gap is about 10 miles from me and I still have not been able to visit it yet! It's on my to do list though for sure. Thank you so much for sharing this information. I love stuff like this. :) And now i'm going to have to eventually try and get to those other sites too!

I was curious about the petroglyph  of the hands with seven fingers (the first picture)  so I researched more on it.  I knew previously that in  folklore giants are said to have six and sometimes seven fingers per hand.  In cultures all over the world evidence and depictions have been found of large men with many fingers. So I wondered if there was in lore in Utah of giants that once lived there and this is what I found.

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This ancient writing (pictured above), done by the Fremont Peoples, (800 to 1000 yrs ago est.) is found just 10 miles from my home, located at Brush Creek, Utah.

I believe it depicts a Bigfoot creature, medicine man next to him, a full moon to his upper right, and another man lower right. As you can see, the creature is some 10 times the size of the man, has huge hands and feet. I have seen hundreds of these drawings here and NONE show these features.

The classic Fremont drawings of man are always 'V' in shape, while this guy is SQUARE and HUGE.

The Fremont culture or Fremont people is 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. The Fremont River itself is named for John Charles Frémont, an American explorer. It inhabited sites in what is now Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from AD 700 to 1300. It was adjacent to, roughly contemporaneous with, but distinctly different from the Anasazi culture.

Fremont Indian State Park in the Clear Creek Canyon area in south-central Utah contains the biggest Fremont culture site in Utah. A recent, major discovery of a new site at Range Creek, Utah, has drawn a great deal of interest because it has stayed undisturbed for centuries. Nearby Nine Mile Canyon has long been known for its large collection of Fremont rock art. Other sites are found in Dinosaur National Monument, Zion National Park and Arches National Park.

While there is as yet no firm consensus as to the Fremont comprising a single, cohesive group with a common language, ancestry or lifeway, there are several aspects of their material culture that give credence to this notion. First, it is well known by researchers that those referred to as the Fremont lived a lifestyle that revolved largely around hunting and gathering and corn horticulture, in other words a continuum of fairly reliable subsistence strategies that no doubt varied from place to place and time to time. This shows up in the archaeological record at most village sites and long term camps as a collection of butchered, cooked and then discarded bone from mostly deer and rabbits, charred corn cobs with the kernels removed, and wild edible plant remains. Other unifying characteristics include the manufacture of relatively expedient gray ware pottery and a signature style of basketry and rock art. Most of the Fremont lived in small single and extended family units comprising villages ranging from two to a dozen pithouse structures, with only a few having been occupied at any one time. Still, exceptions to this rule exist (partly why the Fremont have earned a reputation for being so hard to define), including an unusually large village in the Parowan Valley of southwestern Utah, the large and extensively excavated village of Five Finger Ridge at the above mentioned Fremont Indian State Park, and others, all appearing to be anomalous in that they were either occupied for a long period of time, were simultaneously occupied by a large number of people, sixty or more at any given moment, or both.

I guess many people interpret the Freemont man in the Freemont petroglyph as big foot, but I personally think that it is depicting a giant of some sort.

This is so cool. I think I am going to have to agree with you that its most likely a giant of some sort not bigfoot or anything like that.