The first people known to inhabit Canyonlands were the Archaic hunter-gatherers. Nomadic by nature, they wandered the area
2,000 to 10,000 years ago in search of large game animals and edible plants.
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.
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.
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!
Learn more about Canyonlands National Park.
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