Canyonlands Pioneers

As the culture evolved, these hunter-gatherers began cultivating corn and constructing cisterns for storing the grains. Beautiful and intricate baskets were being constructed by the Basketmakers.

Around 450 A.D. they developed pottery, adopted the bow and arrow, and developed multi-roomed pueblos with ceremonial chambers known as kivas.

An ancient Kiva overlooking the Canyonlands - large image

The Basketmakers and later Pueblo people, are now collectively referred to as Ancestral Puebloans. As their culture diminished due to cultural shifts or possibly disease and famine, such artifacts as projectile points, atlatls or spear throwers, fire hearths, and pictographs were left behind.

By A.D. 1300, the Puebloans left the region. Ute, Navajo, and Paiute Indians all occupied southern Utah when the Padres, Escalante and Dominguez circled Canyonlands in 1776, looking for a route between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Monterey, California. From 1836 through 1838, a trapper named Denis Julien left his name carved through the great Canyonlands area, including the Colorado River canyon.

Canyonlands rafting and inflatable kayaking - large image

Little was known of Colorado River rafting until 1869, when a great pioneer, Major John Wesley Powell traveled on his first river expedition from Green River, Utah. Powell repeated the trip in 1871-72, continuing his studies of the topography, natural history and Native American cultures.

Bert Loper, Charles Russell, and E. R. Monett made the first pleasure river rafting run down the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon in 1907. The first motion pictures of the canyons were filmed by Emery and Ellsworth Kolb on their 1911 trip, and in 1937, Norman Nevills started commercial rafting trips on the Colorado River.

Discover the beauty of the wilderness seen by these first pioneers on your next Colorado river rafting trip and inflatable kayaking adventure to Cataract Canyon!