The Bears Ears region: an overview

Seen from almost anywhere on Cedar Mesa, the Bears Ears are two flat-topped buttes standing a little apart, near 9,000 feet, at the southern end of Elk Ridge. Several of the region’s peoples know them by the same image in their own languages: Hoon’Naqvut in Hopi, Shash Jáa in Navajo, Kwiyagatu Nukavachi in Ute and Ansh An Lashokdiwe in Zuni. The name has come to stand for the whole country around them, a block of San Juan County roughly bounded by the Abajo Mountains to the north, Comb Ridge to the east, the San Juan River to the south and the canyons of the Colorado to the west.

The lay of the land

Elk Ridge is the high ground, a forested spine of ponderosa pine and aspen in the Manti-La Sal National Forest. South of it the land steps down onto Cedar Mesa, a broad tableland of pinyon and juniper at a little over 6,000 feet. It is cut by steep canyons, Grand Gulch the longest, that drain toward the San Juan River.

To the east, Comb Ridge runs for roughly 80 miles from northern Arizona to near Blanding, a long fold of sandstone tilted so steeply that it reads from a distance like the teeth of a comb. Beyond it lie Butler Wash, the town of Bluff and the San Juan River, which marks the boundary of the Navajo Nation for much of its course here. Monticello sits near the Abajos to the north, and Mexican Hat on the river to the south.

This is dry country, and its archaeology has survived largely because of that dryness.

A long human record

The first people here were hunters of the late Ice Age, whose distinctive fluted spear points have been found in the region. For thousands of years after them, Archaic groups moved through the canyons and uplands with the seasons, gathering seeds and hunting deer and bighorn.

Maize farming took hold around two thousand years ago. The people archaeologists call Basketmakers grew corn and squash on the mesa tops and canyon floors and stored their harvests in the alcoves, where their baskets, sandals and blankets still turn up. Pottery, beans and the bow and arrow came into use around AD 500 and after. Through the Pueblo periods that came next, settlement on Cedar Mesa rose and fell in waves, with long stretches when the mesa was nearly empty. In the 1200s many families lived in masonry rooms tucked into canyon walls.

By about 1290 the farming villages of the region had been left. The people did not vanish. Their descendants live today among the Hopi villages, at Zuni and in the Pueblos of New Mexico, and their oral histories place these canyons on their ancestors’ migration routes. The places remain part of their religious life.

Navajo, Ute and Paiute country

The Diné have long ties to the Bears Ears. Navajo tradition places important events of their history here, and the nineteenth century Navajo leaders K’aayélii and Manuelito are both said to have been born near the buttes. The region was also part of the homeland of the Weenuche band of Utes, whose descendants belong to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe today, with a community at White Mesa south of Blanding. San Juan Southern Paiute families lived and traveled here as well. Gathering, hunting and ceremonies continue here for all of these communities.

Settlers and towns

Mormon settlers sent to colonize the San Juan country reached the river at Bluff in April 1880, after a winter crossing of the Colorado. Their route, now known as the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail, crosses a long stretch of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Monticello was settled later that decade and Blanding in the first years of the 1900s. Ranching, uranium and oil followed, then hikers, river runners and climbers.

Who manages it now

Most of the region is public land. The BLM’s Monticello Field Office manages the canyons and mesas, the Forest Service manages Elk Ridge and the Abajos, and the state trust lands office holds scattered sections. In December 2016 the area became the first national monument created at the request of a coalition of tribes, at about 1.35 million acres. A proclamation a year later reduced Bears Ears National Monument to two units, Indian Creek in the north and Shash Jáa around the buttes, totaling about 201,876 acres. Lawsuits against that reduction are before a federal court in Washington, D.C. In August 2018 the BLM and Forest Service released draft management plans for the two units, with public comment open until November 15.

Cedar Mesa and Grand Gulch fall outside the current units but remain one of the densest archaeological areas in the country, and backcountry use there needs a permit. Overnight permits can now be reserved on Recreation.gov, and the Kane Gulch Ranger Station on Cedar Mesa has maps, camping and hiking advice and current conditions in season. Visiting respectfully here means leaving every wall, sherd and corncob as it lies.