Nobody roped off these Utah cliff dwellings. You can just walk up and stand inside them

Ancient ruins you can actually walk up to

Cedar Mesa sits in southeastern Utah, a 400-square-mile plateau of sandstone and sky inside Bears Ears National Monument.

Its canyons go deep and quiet, and inside them, thousands of Ancestral Puebloan sites wait where they’ve always been. Cliff dwellings. Granaries. Kivas.

Rock art pressed into orange walls. Nobody roped them off behind a fence.

Most of them you can walk right up to, if you know where to go.

13,000 years of people living on this mesa

The story here goes back to the Clovis people, who walked this plateau roughly 13,000 years ago.

The Ancestral Puebloans came later in waves, farming corn on canyon floors, stacking stone rooms under cliff overhangs, and carving ceremonial spaces called kivas into the earth.

By about 1300 AD, most had moved south, probably pushed out by a long drought.

Their descendants, including the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo and Ute peoples, still hold deep ties to this land.

Grand Gulch winds 50 miles through canyon history

Grand Gulch cuts through Cedar Mesa’s western half for roughly 50 miles, and the Primitive Area around it covers more than 37,580 acres.

The canyon holds one of the densest collections of Ancestral Puebloan ruins in the Southwest, with sites ranging from 800 to 1,200 years old.

Around nearly every bend, you’ll find real dwellings, pottery fragments, tools and rock art. The Kane Gulch trailhead puts you four miles from Junction Ruin, a multi-level cliff dwelling where two canyons meet.

House on Fire lights up Mule Canyon’s walls

One mile down the South Fork of Mule Canyon, five well-preserved granaries sit tucked into a Cedar Mesa sandstone alcove.

When sunlight hits the orange rock below the fractured ceiling, the pattern looks like fire pouring over the rooftops. The Ancestral Puebloans stored corn in these rooms, their main food source through long winters.

Keep walking and the full four-mile trail passes at least eight groups of ancient structures, including Wall Ruin, built into a pockmarked vertical cliff.

Climb down into a kiva at Bullet Canyon

Bullet Canyon runs six miles east to west as Grand Gulch’s largest side canyon.

About 4.5 miles in, a large alcove holds Perfect Kiva, a partly restored underground ceremonial room with a ladder you can climb down into. Dwelling rooms, storage structures and rock art fill the rest of the alcove.

A quarter mile farther, Jailhouse Ruin earns its name from a lattice window where sticks crisscross like bars. Three large white circular pictographs mark the cliff face above it, visible from across the canyon.

Moon House takes 20 visitors a day and nothing more

McCloyd Canyon holds one of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings outside any major national park. Moon House gets its name from pictographs inside one room that depict the moon in its different phases.

To keep the fragile site intact, the Bureau of Land Management caps visits at 20 people per day.

You’ll need a permit reserved through Recreation.gov ahead of time, and they run $5 per person.

The hike is about two miles round trip, steep in spots, with a five-foot ledge downclimb near the end.

The Procession Panel stretches across Comb Ridge

Comb Ridge runs 120 miles along Cedar Mesa’s eastern edge, a long wall of tilted sandstone that stops you cold the first time you see it.

The Ancestral Puebloans pecked petroglyphs into its varnished walls, and the Procession Panel is the most striking of them.

It shows 179 human-like figures walking in three lines toward a great circle, the larger ones carrying hooked staffs and wearing headdresses.

You reach it from Butler Wash Road, a dirt track running along the ridge’s eastern side.

Butler Wash Ruin: a cliff dwelling from 1200 AD

Built around 1200 AD on the east side of Comb Ridge, Butler Wash Ruin holds living quarters, storage rooms and four kivas tucked into a cliff face.

A BLM trail crosses slickrock to an overlook of the whole dwelling, about a mile round trip and roughly 30 minutes to walk. Much of the site sits as it was found in the 1800s, with some sections stabilized.

This hike is free and skips the day hiking pass requirement, making it a solid first stop for anyone new to Cedar Mesa.

Fish and Owl Canyons loop through 17 miles of ruins

On Cedar Mesa’s eastern side, the Fish and Owl Canyons loop covers roughly 17 miles through two deep, narrow canyons lined with Ancestral Puebloan ruins and rock art.

Where the two canyons meet, Nevill’s Arch marks the confluence. The BLM caps overnight visitors at 20 people at a time.

No maintained trails run through here, and the route includes scrambling sections, so this one suits experienced hikers. The low visitor numbers mean you’ll have long stretches of canyon entirely to yourself.

The Moki Dugway climbs 1,200 feet of open cliff face

The Moki Dugway is three miles of gravel switchbacks carved into Cedar Mesa’s southern cliff at an 11 percent grade.

Workers cut the road in the late 1950s to haul uranium ore down from mesa mines to a processing mill near Mexican Hat.

Pull over near the top and you’ll see Valley of the Gods spread below, Monument Valley on the horizon and the San Juan River Canyon cutting through the rock.

A short dirt road off Highway 261 leads to Muley Point Overlook, where the canyon walls show layer after layer of color.

Follow the rules or damage what took centuries to build

Cedar Mesa’s ruins are thousands of years old and they break easily.

Federal law bars you from touching rock art or walls, removing anything from the ground, or entering closed structures.

For most Cedar Mesa canyons, day hiking passes are required year-round at $5 per person, $10 per week, or $40 per year per vehicle.

Overnight backpacking permits run $15 per person and need to be reserved through Recreation. gov.

Dirt roads on the mesa close fast in wet weather, so stop at the Kane Gulch Ranger Station or the BLM Monticello Field Office to check conditions before you drive in.

See the region’s finest pottery collection in Blanding

The Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum in Blanding holds the largest collection of Ancestral Puebloan pottery on display anywhere in the Four Corners region.

Walk behind the building and you’re standing inside a real Puebloan village occupied from roughly 825 to 1125 AD. A restored kiva there has a ladder you can climb down into.

Inside the museum, you’ll find pottery, baskets, tools, jewelry and a macaw feather sash dated to about 1150 AD. Plan your Bears Ears trip here first.

Visit the Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum in Utah

If you want to put Cedar Mesa in context before heading into the canyons, the Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum in Blanding is the right place to start. It sits at 660 West 400 North in Blanding, Utah.

Hours run Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Day-use admission is $5. The official website has current hours and any seasonal changes worth checking before you make the drive.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• The Southwest’s most breathtaking slot canyons make every step an adventure
• Utah’s least-hyped park has ancient petroglyphs, spectacular hikes, and free fruit off the tree
• Ancient moon paintings in Utah’s McLoyd Canyon reveal a lost spiritual practice