The Great Gallery

The Great Gallery is probably the most amazing rock in the western United States. It’s located in southeast Utah in what is called Horseshoe Canyon. It’s part of Glen Canyon Recreation Area, which is part of Canyonlands National Park.

Back when I was working for A.C. Ekker, at the Robbers Roost, we used to take dude rides into the canyon to show people the paintings. I used to consider it a nice easy ride. I would take a young horse that day.

Years later, I decided to take my wife down there and show her the paintings. She had never seen them. She hadn’t even rode a horse much. I put her on a little bay mare that was really gentle. I hadn’t been there for several years, and what I didn’t realize was, they had had about 14 inches of rain that summer. That was about twice the yearly average. The rain had washed the sand off of the rocks on the trail leading to the bottom of the canyon. It had also caused flooding in the bottom of the canyon. It was treacherous. She did enjoy the paintings, but she never went with me again.

A.C’s family had ran cattle in the area since 1909, way before it became a national park. The canyon was quite big once you got in the bottom. It wouldn’t handle a large number of cattle, but it was a good place for a few. There were a lot of side canyons, several small springs. There were a couple of different benches that were just up out of the bottom. They called one the upper pasture, and one the lower pasture.

The hardest part about running cattle in there was the access. You had to trail them up out of the canyon to gather them. The cattle that lived in there got quite wild. It was always an adventure when we gather the canyon.

Most of the ranchers, including A.C. weren’t real fond of the park service and all their rules and restrictions. They eventually fenced off the part of the canyon where the paintings were.

A.C. never missed an opportunity to lecture a park ranger about his feelings pertaining to the rules they had imposed on the cattlemen.

We were taking a group into the canyon to see the paintings one time and ran onto a park ranger patrolling the canyon to make sure our horses didn’t eat any of the grass. He also informed us we couldn’t get our horses within 50 ft. of the paintings, as it would get dust on them. The paintings had been there for hundreds of years, I’m sure they had never had dust on them before.

A.C. saw an opportunity to educate a park ranger about how well their rules were helping the environment and saving the canyon from the cattle. He told the ranger “When we used to run cattle in here there was a little trail in the bottom of the canyon about a foot wide, now you’re running these hippies in here the trail is 20 feet wide.”

The great gallery is still amazing. It takes some effort but is still worth it to see if you ever have the chance.