Devil's Kitchen Site

Rating: 
Round Trip Distance: 1 mile
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4806 - 4895 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 1 hr. 30 mins.
Trailhead: Devil's Kitchen
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs

The Devil's Kitchen Site is located about 15 miles northwest of Fillmore, Utah. The site includes numerous petroglyphs on basalt boulders that are stretched out along the south side of a long lava ridge. Over a hundred panels of images have been identified at the Devils Kitchen Site.

For turn-by-turn directions enter Devil's Kitchen Trailhead into your driving app and pick the one near Fillmore. Otherwise drive west out of Fillmore on W200S for 5.8 miles and turn right onto S4600W. Continue for 2 miles and turn right onto W 1200 N. After 1.3 miles continue on the N Clear Lake Road for another 3.4 miles and turn right at the Devil's Kitchen sign. From there it is another 2 miles to the trailhead. The unpaved portions of the route should be suitable for 2wd highway vehicles.

The kiosk at the trailhead mentions that the petroglyphs span a period from 6,000 to 1,000 years ago with the newest images having been made by the Fremont people.

As the trail makes a short drop down to the south side of the ridge the first of the petroglyphs can be seen on a blocky boulder that sits right next to the trail.

The highest concentration of images are closer to the trailhead at the southeast corner of the ridge where the large boulders form a huge pile.

According to the kiosk at the trailhead the abstract images are probably the oldest.

While most of the images are probably on low lying boulders there are many good panels higher up in the pile that might be easily missed.

It is surprising how well some of the very oldest images still show up.

That first bunch of photos were all taken from the basalt outcrop just below the trailhead. Further down the ridge there are some other petroglyphs that are well worth finding like the ones in the picture above.

You can almost imagine Pythagoras using some of these shapes to explain one of his theories.

The two anthropomorphic figures on this boulder are of the Fremont style. It looks like this image might be holding the paw of a grizzly bear in one hand.

There are so many individual images at the Devil's Kitchen Site that we photographed that more than a few didn't make it into the rather lengthy slideshow at the end of this post. We might mention that the road that leads to the trailhead also continues parallel with the base of the ridge where a few short trails lead from the road to the boulders. In our opinion it is better to start from the official trailhead where you can read the kiosk and become better orientated with the site. If you would like to see it for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.