Round Trip Distance: 1 mile
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation: 5057 - 5117 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 1 hr.
Trailhead: Montezuma Creek Road
Fee: none
Attractions: cliff dwellings, pueblo, pottery
Located in the ruin rich Montezuma Creek area east of Blanding, Utah, in the bend of the canyon between the Bradford Canyon Ruins and the Three Kiva Pueblo, are 3 cliff dwellings, some petroglyphs, a large boulder covered with sharpening grooves (tool marks), and a knoll that is carpeted with shards of pottery where a pueblo once stood.
The trailhead is a former 4wd road that is now blocked off that is located on a bend in the Montezuma Creek Road about 1 mile north of the Three Kiva Pueblo site and 1.5 miles south of the Bradford Canyon Ruins. There isn't a pullout but the road is wide enough to park off to the side out of the way. For turn-by-turn directions you can enter 'Three Kiva Pueblo' into your driving app.
All that can be seen of the pueblo are a few depressions in the ground but beginning at the road the entire knoll is seemingly carpeted with shards of pottery of various styles and colors. Some are corrugated and others were painted with images.
Be sure to take no souvenirs and leave all artifacts where you find them. By studying the fragments researchers can determine when and where they were created. Some may have been manufactured locally and others may have been brought by trade from far away places. They help to paint a picture of what was going on at the time.
The old 4wd road becomes more of a trail that comes and goes as it crosses the wash behind the pueblo knoll to get to the cliff dwellings on the opposite side of the wash.
A keen eye can spot the 3 ruins in the low cliff up ahead as you reach the higher ground on the north side of the wash.
The ruin on the right is still mostly intact.
Looking through the door you can see that it was quite roomy with a nice shelf along the back wall and a flat floor. Be sure to only look inside and not enter the structure.
The ruin in the middle consisted of at least these two rooms.
There may have been more rooms that can't be seen from below to the left of this one.
The third set of ruins is partially hidden around a corner by a juniper tree and are easy to miss.
Among the sharpening grooves are a number of petroglyphs. Many of them are carved rather than pecked. This looks like it could represent something like tall stalks of blue grama, or some other type of grass, with their fuzzy seedheads. The grid at the bottom might be a waffle garden.
Here is looks like 2 flute players facing each other with another larger flute player towering over them or larger because it is in the foreground.
And here are a large number of sharpening grooves that we are calling Tool Rock. Some of the grooves are formed into images like the 6 pointed star in the photo. There are several more petroglyphs nearby including some concentric circles.
