Round Trip Distance: 600 feet
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 6174 - 6196 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 15 mins.
Trailhead: Beef Basin Spring Road
Fee: none
Attractions: small pueblo
The Beef Basin Pueblo can be found in the Beef Basin Area northwest of Monticello, Utah. After the lengthy drive into the area this moderately sized multi room structure, that sits along side of the Beef Basin Spring Road, only requires a few hundred feet of hiking. Zooming in to the site on this Google Map in satellite view will disclose a few of the rooms that are even visible from space.
From the kiosk junction at the lower end of House Park reset your odometer and take the left fork toward Stanley Spring.
Near the 3.3 mile point, at a 5-way junction, turn right onto the unmarked Beef Basin Spring Road.
While looking at the map you will notice that the Beef Basin Spring Road ties back into the Beef Basin Road about 1.5 miles from the House Park junction making access from that end of the road another option.
Coming from the direction of the 5-way junction it is right at 0.4 miles to the pueblo. The ruins are visible for a brief moment as you approach them but they disappear completely from view as you drive past. There is no pull off spot to park and no trail leading up from the road to the ruins. The only way that you will find them is either by paying attention as you approach from the south, measuring 0.4 miles from the 5-way junction, or watching for the waypoint on you GPS (providing that you loaded our file beforehand).
The most intact portion of the ruins is a block of rooms that appear to have been dug into the slope of the hill.
The largest portion of the rooms are buried by centuries of dirt where only deep depressions and outlines of walls are visible.
Below all of that overburden of soil might lie multiple kivas and other subterranean rooms.
Our thoughts were that unless these exposed walls were previously partially excavated, as they themselves aren't full of aeolian deposits, that the rooms that sit in front of them may have been subterranean by design as there are other sites where ruins where rooms both above and below ground were intermingled. The depressions might mark kivas or maybe even pithouses.
Pieces of different forms of pottery are noticeably scattered about between the ruins and the road. Be sure to leave all artifacts where they are found and do nothing to disturb the ruins.
For those that are thinking of spending the night in the area one of the best campsites in Beef Basin can be found just up the road by Beef Basin Spring. Here the trees are much taller than most places providing greater shelter from sun and wind.
