Potash Road Petroglyphs ~ Moab

The Potash Road Petroglyphs are located along the paved end of this road near Highway 191, so practically anybody can visit this native heritage site. This is a vey long panel with many characters and some carvings are high on the red rock wall, so plenty of time should be set aside for studying this unique ancient rock art display in its entirety. The Colorado River is located on the other side of the road, so gaining a distant perspective for an overview will nearly be impossible to do, but getting a closeup view is as easy as standing next to the road.

Interpreting the newspaper rock inscriptions certainly is a pastime for many people and there certainly is a lot of reading to do at the Potash Road Petroglyph Panel. Some of the characters are easy to figure out, like the carvings of local wild animals, which suggest hunting grounds in the area. Others symbols are not quite as easy to figure out, because the topic matter may range from celestial events to long forgotten klan markings of tribes that inhabited this area in the ancient past. Some of the rock art simply cannot be explained by any means and these examples can surely be pondered over for a lifetime.

The Potash Road Dinosaur Tracks Trail and the start of the infamously difficult Poison Spider Mesa 4x4 Trail are located next to the petroglyph wall. There are several riverside BLM campgrounds in this area that appeal to river rafters and they are all listed in the Moab BLM campsite reservation system. Booking a campsite well ahead of time is recommended, because Arches and Canyonlands are two of the busiest National Parks in the west during the spring and summer seasons.

​The Potash Road Petroglyphs are well worth checking out when doing a tour of the Moab region and a few more famous rock art panels are located nearby on Kane Creek Road across the river. In fact, similar artwork can be seen throughout all of Utah and it is easy to see that some of the carvings throughout this region were made by the same artist. Tribes migrated everywhere back in ancient times and reading the old newspaper rocks is one method for tracing their steps!      
​