The first full account of the journey and discoveries of an archaeological expedition into the rugged American Southwest. In 1931 a group from Harvard University's Peabody Museum accomplished something that had never been attempted in the history of American archaeology-a six-week, four-hundred-mile horseback survey of prehistoric sites through some of the West's most rugged terrain. The expedition was successful, but a report on the findings was never completed. What should have been one of the great archaeological stories in American history was relegated to boxes and files in the basement of the Peabody Museum at Harvard. Now, based on over a thousand pages of documents and over four hundred photographs, this book recounts the remarkable day-to-day adventures of this crew of one professor, five students, and three Utah guides who braved heat, fatigue, and the dangerous canyon wilderness to reveal vestiges of the Fremont culture in the Tavaputs Plateau and Uinta Basin areas. To better tell this story, authors Spangler and Aton undertook extensive fieldwork to confirm the sites; their recent photographs and those of the original expedition are shared on these pages.

With an estimated 10,000 ancient rock art sites, Nine Mile Canyon has long captivated people the world over. The 45-mile-long canyon, dubbed the "World's Longest Art Gallery," hosts what is believed to be the largest concentration of rock art in North America. But rock art is only part of the amazing archaeological fabric that scholars have been struggling to explain for more than a century. Jerry D. Spangler takes the reader on a journey into Nine Mile Canyon through the eyes of the generations of archaeologists
who have gone there only to leave bewildered by what it all means.
The early visitors in the 1890s were determined to recover collections for museums but never much cared to understand the people who left the artifacts. Then came a cadre of young scientists--the first to be trained specifically in archaeology--who found Nine Mile Canyon to be an intriguing laboratory that yielded more questions than answers. Scholars such as Noel Morss, Donald Scott, Julian Steward, John Gillin, and John Otis Brew all left their boot prints there.
Today, archaeological research is experiencing another renaissance--a new generation of university-trained archaeologists is determined to unravel the mystery of Nine Mile Canyon using scientific tools and techniques that were unavailable to past generations. Through the words and thoughts of the archaeologists, as well as the more than 150 photos, readers will come to see Nine Mile Canyon as an American treasure unlike any other. As the first book that is devoted exclusively to the archaeology of this unique
place, "Nine Mile Canyon "will evoke fascination among scholars and the general public alike.