Walk through ancient ruins at Utah’s Edge of the Cedars State Park
SAN JUAN COUNTY, Utah (ABC4) — Edge of the Cedars State Park houses millions of artifacts of southeastern Utah’s past civilizations.
You can get up close and personal with the foundations of the four corners through the park’s ancient kiva and excavated great house — which are both more than 1,000 years old.
“This is another fantastic element of Utah’s history that doesn’t get heard as often or as much as perhaps we would like to,” Edge of the Cedars museum curator Jonathan Till said.
Till knows he maintains a window to our past worlds.
Only three museums exist among Utah’s 46 state parks and here at Edge of the Cedars, the learning never stops.
Nikke Neves, a Spanish Fork resident, homeschools her children. She brought them to the museum for one of their lessons.
“They are learning a lot,” Neves said. “We actually read stories about this place, we get to come down and see it, they learn all sorts of history.”
The museum showcases rare thousand-years-old artifacts, walks you through unearthed ancient ruins, and protects rare repository you can’t find anywhere else.
“That repository space harbors essentially a library of the material culture of the Native American peoples of the four corners region, especially here in southeastern Utah,” Till said.
Collections dating back 13,000 years plot back to the Paleo Indian times and sprinkle in Navajo, Ute, and Piute representation.
“The fact that they captured it both visually, and the actual ruins themselves, gives you perspective on how people lived back then, and an appreciation too,” Venkat Ranansubrananian, a visitor from New Jersey, said.
The museum showcases items like tools, clothing, a ceremonial Macaw feather sash, and a plethora of pottery.
According to Till, pottery has an “amazing, deep history” at the park that extends back to the AD 500s.
“The four corners region is perhaps one of the best places in the world to talk about how people become farmers, how people become city-dwellers, and how we experiment with that idea of urbanization,” Till said. “This is one of the best places to do that.”
