The Great Stone Face

Rating: 
One-way Distance: 1.3 miles (mostly driving)
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4586 - 4628 feet
Cellphone: 0-2 bars
Time: 2 hrs.
Trailhead: The Great Stone Face
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs

The Great Stone Face site is located southwest of Delta, Utah. The site is named from a prominent basalt outcrop that rises above a ridge towering above the valley. The formation has a striking likeness to the founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith. Those that have an interest in petroglyphs can search them out amongst the countless basalt boulders that are strewn about the hillsides.

The well known trailhead is about 17 miles southwest of Delta, Utah. For turn by turn directions you can enter 'The Great Stone Face' into your driving app. Otherwise head west out of Delta on US 50 for about 5 miles and turn south onto UT-257. After another 6 miles turn right at the sign in this photo onto W 7500 S.

The well maintained graveled road heads due west for about 5 miles before wrapping around the hill to the trailhead. Here you will see a large fenced area with the primary attraction, a large boulder covered with images, as far as petroglyphs go. The other attraction is of course the 'Great Stone Face' which can be seen on top of the ridge straight ahead.

 The images are much easier to make out when you take away the direct sunlight.

Most of the images look to be from the Archaic Period. There are probably a couple of atlatls in this photo mixed in with a lot of other stuff.

We marked seven other boulders on the map although there are probably many more than that. A few of them are on the hillside above the road where the red arrow is pointing. There are a lot more boulders that are along a 4wd road that travels around the hill that is across the flats to the south. That road doesn't really require 4wd but it has a couple of rough spots that do require a little ground clearance. It is easily hiked.

This image is on a mostly flat boulder northeast of the fenced off area. It shows up in person much better than in this photo.

This boulder was one of the exceptions. It is a little time consuming scrambling around on the hillside between the fenced off boulder and the Great Stone Face. We probably missed as many boulders as we found.

This boulder can be seen from the road just east of the fenced off area. The images show up quite well from the right angle.

Driving along the 4wd road it is pretty easy to spot boulders with images from the road.

Nimbus comes to mind when seeing this boulder.

Here thee are several 'vulva signs' plus mostly geometric lines and shapes.

Most of the boulders have geometric shapes and a few bighorn images or images of other game animals. This boulder is a typical example.

We searched up around 'The Great Stone Face' without seeing anything. Also, we didn't go very far around the hill back along the access road. Since we only searched a fraction of the area, we may have only found a fraction of the images. We may have even missed the best of the best. If you would like to try your own luck, then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.