Round Trip Distance: 0.25 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4950 - 4976 feet
Cellphone: 0-2 bars
Time: 30 mins.
Trailhead: MM 31
Fee: none
Attractions: cliff dwelling, petroglyphs
The Watched Over Ruin is located along Montezuma Creek between Blanding and Monticello, Utah. The site includes a cliff dwelling where the ruins of several rooms can still be seen as well as a few interesting petroglyphs.
There are multiple ways to get to the Watched Over Ruin depending upon your direction of travel. If coming from the north you can turn off of US-191 5 miles south of Monticello onto the unmarked graveled Montezuma Creek Road, CR-187, and follow it south for 31 miles where the site will be on your right. According to Google Maps somewhere along the way CR-187 becomes CR-146.
The ruins are only about 100 yards or so from the Montezuma Creek Road.
On a smooth part of the cliff above the ruin is a large unusual petroglyph that watches over the site.
There are only a few walls of a couple of rooms that remain standing.
Another wall that is blackened near the top with soot can be seen at the south end of the overhang. We were unable to tell whether the area in between once had more rooms or was used as a work area.
This line proceeding from the hole in the rock with an ascending spiral attached might represent the emergence from the sipapu, perhaps to this place. There is a very faint anthropomorphic figure below the line that probably was intended to add further meaning. If you look carefully there is a pecked line coming from the same hole in the rock that leads to the anthropomorphic figure. Along its course the pecked line has what might be a water symbol and a circle that might represent gathering resulting in the impression that this figure led the people here to this place of water.
Possible bear clan symbols.
Geometric symbols like these can really be head scratchers.
