Shortly after Pearl and Ray Wilcox bought their 4,200-acre Range Valley ranch in eastern Utah’s rugged Book Cliffs region in 1951, they threw up a gate, ostensibly to protect their herd of Hereford cattle. Last June the world learned the real reason—and it was spectacular. They had been hiding hundreds of small, undisturbed Native American villages dating to the time of the Fremont, a collection of hunter-gatherers and farmers whose complex 1,000-year culture mysteriously ended along with much of North America’s agriculture 750 years ago.
The find could be one of the most significant discoveries in American archaeological history. Virtually untouched by modern man, the area includes villages of stone pit houses built halfway underground, rock shelters, cliff-side granaries still holding corncobs and wild grass seeds, and hundreds of colorful rock art panels—pecked out with a hand tool or painted—some predating the Fremont. Arrowheads, beads, tools, and pottery shards, many ...
