Round Trip Distance: 0.5 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4799 - 4849 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 45 mins.
Trailhead: 257 to Kanosh Road mm 1.7
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs
The Water Tanks Site is located south of Delta, Utah a couple of miles east of Utah Highway 257 along what is called the 257 to Kanosh Road. The site is known for it's large number of interesting petroglyphs that were pecked onto the surfaces of many of the basalt boulders that cover a short bench near a natural spring. The spring now fills a big metal water tank for which the site gets its name.
The most straight forward directions are from Delta, Utah. The site is closest to Kanosh albeit with about 25 miles of sometimes questionable dirt road to drive. From Delta head west on US-6 & 50 for just under 5 miles and turn left or south onto UT-257. Continue for 42.7 miles and turn left, or east, onto the 257 to Kanosh Road which also goes by several other names over its course. After turning off of UT-257 continue across the railroad tracks and drive until you reach a road that branches off on the right near the 1.7 mile point from UT-257. This should be the first road on the right that you come to in this direction.
As you approach the road that you will turn right on you will see the hill in this photo where we have circled in red the area where most of petroglyphs are concentrated.
The road is suitable for 2wd passenger vehicles in dry weather all the way up to the water tank but gets slightly rougher after that point. We continued past the water tank for less than a quarter mile to where there are several easy routes up to the first bench where the petroglyphs are found. If you park back at the water tank you can either walk along the road before climbing up to the bench or simply climb up the rounded hill at the water tank and go from there. The bench area is only 50 feet above the road that travels around the base of the hill.
After leaving the rode it is just a matter of looking around at all the boulders for petroglyphs.
Many of the images show up quite well like this 6 fingered hand with an interesting dot above one of the fingers.
The sites iconic attraction is this pyramid shaped rock. It was a single photo of this rock that allowed us to pinpoint the site with little trouble as the railroad shows up in the background when you zoom in and the water tank is easy to spot on Google Satellite View. We made a GPX file from that information and drove straight to the site.
A person could probably do an entire post just of the images on this boulder. Short rake symbols generally represent rain but this longer image seems more like a wing. The anthropomorphic image just above it has 3-toed bird feet. The bighorn sheep just to the right and above the graffiti has a rake for a body style. Rake symbols that do seem to represent rain are a common theme on many of the boulders. The first boulder we showed had 2 or 3. Maybe the one on this boulder that looks like a wing has dual symbolism. That of course can be said about most images in general.
Some of the boulders have images on all their sides.
This is a boulder with what looks like a 6-toed bear paw among many other things. There are also more interesting images on the other sides of this boulder as well.
A chunk fell off of this boulder. Either it only fell a few inches or someone picked it up and set it back on the side of the rock. Judging from the surface cracks there will be yet more pieces breaking off in the future.
Story Rock.
