Round Trip Distance: 0.4 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4997 - 5036 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 30 mins.
Trailhead: Montezuma Creek Rd. mm 5
Fee: none
Attractions: pics, pets, granary
The Tank Canyon site is found in the Montezuma Creek area east of Blanding, Utah on the south side of a hairpin turn at the confluence of Montezuma Canyon and Tank Canyon. The site includes a few interesting pictographs, some petroglyphs, potshards, and the remains of a small granary.
It is about 5 miles from the Perkins Road up the Montezuma Creek Road, coming from the south, or 2 miles from the Three Kiva Pueblo if coming from the north. Five or six small panels of rock art and a granary can be found by walking parallel with the road along the base of the hill on the east side of the road. There isn't an official pullout but it is easy enough to park off to the side out of the way in the chance that another vehicle might come along. You can enter 'Three Kiva Pueblo' into your driving app for turn-by-turn directions but take care to stick to the well maintained Perkins and Montezuma Creek roads that are 2wd friendly and not something like the Dead Man Canyon Road.
When we took the photos for this post we were unsure whether there was anything here so we had parked in the middle of the area and walked straight through the greasewood to these petroglyphs. We then explored the cliff to the left, turned around, and explored it to the right. The map at the end of this post has been altered to make it appear that we started at the south end of the cliff.
We're not sure if these would be classified as late Basketmaker II style images or something else but that is what we would guess first.
Here are a kind of interesting pair of anthropomorphs. If you look closely at the top figures head you can make out hair whorls. There are 2 cupules pounded into the rock. The bottom figure is touching one with its foot and another with its uplifted hand at the same time as the top figure is touching it with its foot. While the intended meaning isn't clear to us it is still nevertheless interesting.
Further up the cliff to the left there is a small red pictograph of what looks like a well drawn corn stalk.
There isn't much left of the small granary. It can be found in a crevice that is a little above head high.
Here's a cute little fully pecked image with up turned feet and arms.
This might be an anthropomorphic image with a very large head and arms that hang down almost to its feet.
Here is another panel of pictographs that is worth noting. For lack of anything better we would call it 'The Hand Placing the Stars' or something along that line.
Some of the red dots form shapes but no familiar constellations jumped out at us.
We'll include this image because it looks like a duck head which symbolizes a shaman that takes the form of a duck when traveling about.
