#rangley

Cañon Pintado National Historic District, CO (No. 3)

Please Be Kind To The Rock Art

Be a friend of the past. Do not walk on boulders with Rock Art or dislodge any rocks from canyon walls.

Rock Art is a fragile and unique vestige of our Native American Heritage.

Time and weather have caused much of the treasure to disappear but the greatest destroyer of all is the vandal who defaces, chalks, and chips.

Cherish and preserve this legacy that is hundreds and, in some cases, over a thousand years old.

Principal rock art in the Rangely area is located along two corridors; Canyon Pintado (State Hwy 139) and Dragon Road (County Rd. 23, White Ave. in Rangely).

The local rock art originated from two peoples; Fremont and Ute.

The Canyon Pintado Historic District comprises eight marked sites along State Hwy 139. By starting in Rangely, travel east on Highway 64 then turn right on Highway 139 and travel south. Sites are well marked with roadway markers. For a self-guided tour, be sure and pick up a brochure when you're in town or click on the link below for a printer-friendly map.

The Canyon Pintado Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is located in northwest Colorado in the Douglas Valley south of Rangely. Canyon Pintado (Painted Canyon) has been occupied by prehistoric people for as long as 11,000 years and was repeatedly visited by a variety of cultures throughout its long history. One culture that left a visible mark on the Canyon was the Fremont. The Canyon provides the largest concentration of Fremont archaeological sites along the Dinosaur Diamond. More than fifty archaeological sites in the Canyon Pintado District were the handiwork of Fremont-age peoples. The Canyon Pintado Historic District features eight marked sites along Highway 139 south of Rangely. The sites feature petroglyphs and pictographs on the sheer sandstone walls that were left by Fremont and Ute civilizations long before Europeans explored the West.

Why did the Native Americans inscribe petroglyphs and paint pictographs on the sheer sandstone walls in so many places around Rangely and the West? Were they doodle, religious scripture, boundaries, events, hunting maps, memories, leaders, ghosts?

No one knows for sure, but studying these mysterious messages from civilizations long past may trigger your imagination and give you a feel for the history that you probably can't fully experience in any museum.

Rock art was applied to the stone in two ways. A petroglyph is a drawing that has been "pecked", or rubbed into the rock. The artist pecked an image by repeatedly tapping on the rock surface with another stone. A pictograph was painted onto the rock using pigments from animals, plants or minerals. In rare cases, early artists would use both methods for a single image.

Welcome to Rangley, Georgia, a small town where the trucks are never clean, the American flag flies high in the sky, and the citizens are proud to live in a small town. Even though from the outside looking in, this town looks like a little piece of heaven on earth, things are not always as they seem. Secrets lie behind those closed doors, impulse moments are put into action in the bed of that old truck, and people’s lives are forever changed by the littlest things. Even though everything looks safe and sound on the outside; inside is a whole new world. In this small town lives families who have called this place their home for generations. People passing through or moving in will see  families who have planted their roots deep into the Rangley soil decades ago and see from the moment they enter the city limits just how close-knit this town is. You will hear the country music playing loud from the big trucks that drive through the streets, and generations from great-grandpa’s to the little one in diapers wearing cowboy boots. However, when it comes to the kids that run wild in this town, you will see them look like sweet, down home kids with good morals when they are around their family and in the community. You will see boys that work on the farm from dawn until dusk on the weekends, girls working the week away so they can go out on Saturday to the rodeo, and kids that are just trying to make it day by day the best they can. Yet, if you follow them close enough and out at night, you will see just what the Rangley kids can do. From beer drinkin’, to late night bon-fires, playing in the mud, to late nights behind the barn doors. Nothing is ever quiet and in the local high school, nothing stays a secret long. This close and warm town, crazed and southern as it may be, you will never not see a time when the whole town does not get together to see the first rodeo of the season, or not see them all out on the fair grounds laying on their truck beds watching the fireworks on the fourth of July. Sure, drama and secrets break through this tight bond, but at the end of the day, this town is just one big family and where love means more than just the four letters it is made up of Rangley is a place where they will always welcome new people and families in with warm smiles and open hearts.

RULES || OPEN MALES || OPEN FEMALES || APPLY || QUESTIONS