Round Trip Distance: 2.8 miles
Difficulty: Moderate
Elevation: 6227 - 6368 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 4 hrs.
Trailhead: 37.35085, -109.96267
Fee: $5/person/day, $10/week
Attractions: cliff dwellings
The Big Ruins in the Main West Fork of Johns Canyon are found in the Cedar Mesa Area of the Bears Ears National Monument west of Blanding, Utah. The site includes 10 or 12 cliff dwelling style rooms that are tucked away beneath a shallow overhanging cliff. Some of the rooms are in near perfect condition and include what look like the original flat rocks that covered their doors.
To get there find your way to the Kane Gulch Ranger Station to pay your fee. (At present there aren't any payment stations along the Johns Canyon Road.) From there continue south on UT-261 toward the Moki Dugway for 11.5 miles where at a bend in the road there is a large parking area on the right. The Johns Canyon Road, CR 2211, begins at the right side of the parking area. If you are towing a trailer this is a good place with plenty of room to leave it.
Follow the Johns Canyon Road for 1.7 miles and turn left onto a 4WD road. This is the second turnoff from UT-261 and is also recognizable by the tall water tank a short distance down the road.
Follow the 4WD road straight for about 3 tenths of a mile and go to the right. From there work your way around to the rim of the canyon for another 3 tenths of a mile to where there are several primitive campsites with lots of room to park. For turn-by-turn directions try entering the GPS coordinates 37.35085, -109.96267 into your driving app.
From the southernmost campsite find the trail that crosses the slickrock wash. For the most part the trail is well worn as it basically follows the contours of the canyon. It might disappear in a place or two but it is usually pretty easy to find it once again.
At the 1 mile point the route drops into a side branch of the canyon by passing between a couple of large rocks where which way to go is obvious enough.
There is a spillover in the side canyon that most people seem to go around on the left. We think that the route that we took on the right looked much easier. It didn't require much in the way of technical skills or we would have gone the other way. The idea here is to get about 2 short benches lower into the canyon and then traverse around to the ruins.
About a quarter mile from where the route drops into the canyon the ruins come into view stretched out beneath an overhang. A lot of the ruins in this photo are blocked from view by the tree. They actually go quite a way down the ridge one after the other.
The first room is about as perfect as a ruin can be. It has a large flat rock for a door that is still in place. Thinking that the risk of the door falling and getting broken was more than we could bear we didn't try tilting it back and looking inside not wanting to be that guy that caused such a tragic misfortune as that would be?
From there the ruins continue beneath the overhang one after the other.
Several of the rooms have signs reminding visitors not to enter inside.
Here is a group of near perfect granaries or storage rooms all with doors intact. We've read historical accounts that mentioned the practice of keeping enough surplus food on hand to allow for drought years. In that regard it is easy to imagine this site with all of its storage rooms as a sort of warehouse.
The door of this room is similar in style as that of the Horsecollar Ruin nearby in the Natural Bridges National Monument.
Toward the end of the row of ruins is another that is also near perfect.
It has a near perfect room hidden right behind it.
Further out on the end of the point there are a couple of large capped buttes that both had ruins on top of them that are best seen from the ridge above the Big Ruins. Across the canyon there are 3 more sets of ruins that are visible. The ones in this photo are those usually accessed via a tree ladder.
