Round Trip Distance: 1.25 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4986 - 5058 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 1 hrs. 45 mins.
Trailhead: Max Dalton Artesian Well
Fee: none
Attractions: cliff dwellings, rock art
The Max Dalton Group of cliff dwellings is located in the Montezuma Creek area east of Blanding, Utah. The site may include up to 10 individual cliff dwellings, one of which has 8 rooms. A few pictographs and petroglyphs are also present.
From Blanding drive south on US-191 to the Browns Canyon Road. Follow that to the Perkins Road and turn right. Continue on the graveled Perkins Road for about 18.5 miles and turn left onto the Montezuma Creek Road. From there it is another 5 miles to the trailhead. For turn by turn directions you could enter 'Three Kiva Pueblo' into your driving app. The trailhead for the Max Dalton Group comes up about 2.2 miles before the Three Kiva Pueblo. Note that when the Montezuma Creek Road has been recently graded it is normally drivable by 2wd highway vehicles. After heavy rains it can get washed out in places and 4wd might be advisable.
The topo map at the bottom of this post shows 11 cliff dwellings in this immediate area. For this outing we opted to find the cliff dwelling that was furthest from the road first and then work our way back toward the road. To get to that one, which would be #9, it is necessary to hike toward the artesian well and then find an old trail that leads from the valley floor up to a 4wd road that runs across the plateau.
There is no need to hike all the way up to the 4wd road though as the ruin will be spotted on the left beneath an overhang on the first bench above the valley.
After viewing that ruin you can return to the valley floor and begin hiking along the base of the cliff looking for ruins. You probably already spotted a few of them when you were hiking toward the artesian well.
The next ruin, which is well intact, sits on a ledge beneath an overhang maybe 10 feet above the ground. It is easy enough to see from below without trying to scale the cliff.
After that ruin is the largest one that we found in the area. It has about 10 individual rooms plus a couple of small storage pockets. There is an easy place on the north end of the ruin where you can walk up for a closer look.
This photo is looking down the ledge where about half the rooms can be seen at a glance. The overhang is deep enough that some of the rooms are very spacious.
The next ruin is also easy to walk up to for close inspection.
This ruin has a few pictographs. If you can find them there are a pair of what look like very small baby hand prints.
The next to the last ruin that we marked as Max Dalton #2 is pretty high up on the side of the canyon. It doesn't look too hard to scramble up to it but we didn't try it on this trip.
What we marked as Max Dalton #1 is a large cave that is up near the rim of the canyon.
In a nice shady spot before the road there are a few petroglyphs.
The map shows another ruin that we couldn't spot from below somewhere up on the hill behind where our truck is parked. There is also a ruin directly south on the opposite side of Montezuma Creek that is easier to see from where our truck is parked than it is if you hike in that direction. The Max Dalton Group of ruins are fun to search out. If the topo map is accurate, and we have always found that to be the case, then we missed 3 or 4 of the ruins. They were probably hidden away on higher benches than what we could see from below. If you would like to see them for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
