In the summer of 1963 an archaeological survey of Colorado National Monument was carried out, under the terms of an agreement between the National Park Service and the University of Colorado, by Stroh and Ewing and their field assistants.[10] A total of 75 aboriginal sites were found of which 71 were within the Monument boundaries of that date, and 4 were closely adjacent. These comprised 41 open campsites, 24 rock shelters, 2 small caves, and 8 chipping stations. Artifacts recovered included 62 projectile points, 21 metates (grinding stones), 40 manos (hand stones), 111 whole or fragments of blades or scrapers, 6 choppers, several fragments of baskets, potsherds (bits of broken pottery) at two sites, 2 wood awls, several strands of yucca fibers, 3 corncobs, 6 kernels of corn, several bone fragments, storage cists at five sites, and petroglyphs at three locations.
Stroh and Ewing concluded that the majority of the sites appear to have been the campsites of a hunting and gathering people, and they speculated that there may have been aboriginal activity in the area from as long as several thousand years ago to relatively recent times.
The largest of the petroglyphs,[11] or rock drawings, are on a fallen slab of Wingate Sandstone in No Thoroughfare Canyon, and are shown in [figure 4]. Archaeologist John Crouch ([footnote 10]), who kindly reexamined these petroglyphs in February 1980, told me that most of the figures appear to be Shoshonian (Ute), but that some may be of the Fremont culture[12] or even older.
PETROGLYPHS, on fallen slab of Wingate Sandstone in No Thoroughfare Canyon. Figure of man at lower right is about 6 inches high. The fading designs were traced with chalk before photographing them. Photograph by T. R. Giles, U.S. Geological Survey. (Fig. 4)
Late Arrivals
Early Settlement[13]
Prior to 1881 the Monument area was inhabited only by Ute Indians, but it was visited from time to time by a few fur trappers, explorers, and geologists. In 1776 an expedition led by Fathers Dominguez and Escalante passed northward across Grand Mesa, the high plateau just east of the area, which is pointed out in many of the photographs. A trading post was built by Joseph Roubidoux about 1838 just above the present site of Grand Junction. In 1853 Captain John W. Gunnison, seeking a new route for a transcontinental railroad, led an exploring party down what is now the Gunnison River Valley, past the confluence with the Grand River (now called the Colorado, [p. 16]), and on down the valley. Geologists and topographers of the Hayden Survey found only Ute Indians in the area in 1875 and 1876, and their field season of 1875 was abruptly cut short because of skirmishes with hostile Utes. After the Meeker (Colorado) Massacre of 1879, believed by many to have been caused mainly by the ignorance and shortsightedness of Meeker himself, treaties were signed forcing the Utes out of western Colorado onto reservations in eastern Utah, and the last of the Utes was reportedly out of the area by September 1881. The Grand Valley was immediately opened to settlement, and the first ranch was staked out on September 7, 1881. Nineteen days later George A. Crawford founded Grand Junction as a townsite and formed the Grand Junction Town Company the next month. The success of the new town was assured on November 21, 1882, when the narrow-gage line of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad (now Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad) reached it via the Gunnison River valley. The town of Fruita was founded by William E. Pabor in 1883 and incorporated the following year.