DRY CANYON, Carbon County — Clayton Elliott was working alone in this rough side canyon, busy with his measuring tape. He was marking off distances from a wooden stake that had been stuck into the ground beside a sagebrush.
The stake was the site where big vibroseis trucks were to jostle the earth with their steel vibrating pads, delivering 10,000 pounds of pressure per pad, in a seismic survey of underground natural gas reserves. The area is a scenic tributary to Nine Mile Canyon dubbed Dry Canyon. Nine Mile has been dubbed the world's longest art gallery for its plethora of ancient rock art, and Dry Canyon has an abundance, too.
The Stone Canyon 3-D Seismic Survey Project is one of the most controversial in this section of eastern Utah because the region is an archaeological treasure house. It is also important to wildlife, and its natural beauty is impressive.
Elliott was preparing monitoring devices where he would take readings of ground motion, once the trucks began their work.
His employer, Matheson Mining Consultants of Golden, Colo., has authority to shut down the project if vibrations exceed the standards set out in a federal permit. Technically, the limit is a peak particle velocity of 0.75 feet per second, measured 50 feet or farther from the trucks.
"I'm monitor the peak particle velocity with a seismograph," Elliott noted. The seismographs, calibrated yearly, measure "how much force is moving through the ground," he said.
That is one of several stipulations that the Bill Barrett Corp. must meet while surveying the underground gas resources.
Barrett's wells generally would be drilled or deepened on top of the nearby West Tavaputs Plateau, but seismic work must be carried out in the canyons. And the canyons are where most of the renowned rock art panels are located.
The intricate and lovely pictures chipped onto the desert varnish of the sandstone cliffs aren't the only evidence of the vanished Fremont Culture, as the Deseret Morning News discovered while riding with Bureau of Land Management archaeologist Julie Howard and BLM spokeswoman Adrienne Babbitt.
As she drove, Howard pointed out "a pit house village right above us, up to the left, and there are pit house depressions where Fremont Indian people lived almost 1,000 years ago."
Pit houses are homes dug into the soil, with more structure above, including walls and roof. The depressions were on a ridge, about 80 feet above the canyon bottom.
About 10 percent of the hundreds of archaeological sites recorded in the Nine Mile complex are places where people lived, while the rest are rock art panels, from figures with antlers to cradle boards to horned snakes. In addition, tower structures are on high land and many granaries are hidden in alcoves.
Why were the homes off the canyon floor? "I think it was defensive," Howard said. But also, anyone who has camped on the canyon floor knows that insects are abundant there. "If you get up higher, you get away from some of the bugs."
Granaries are often hard to find, as if the inhabitants were trying to hide them from other people. Also, they were well-chinked with rock and mortar, an attempt to keep rodents and bugs away from the stored food.
A change of climate, with years of drought, warfare, a depletion of resources — these contributed to the abandonment of the region a millennium ago, according to Howard.
Today, the area is a checkerboard of private, state and federal land. "Right in the bottom, in Nine Mile Canyon, you'll see real estate signs," Babbitt said.
Federal officials and company officials are finding they need to form a "partnership with the private land owners and the state, to find some long-term solutions to protect the rock art, and then also to allow the Bill Barrett Corp. to develop the mineral leases that they've held, many of which for over 20 years," she added.
The most famous rock art panel in the area, called the Hunting Scene, is located on state land. It shows men with bows and arrows going after bighorn sheep.
"The company actually expended the funds and rerouted the road around it," Howard said. "For the first time now, you can visit the site without being impacted by traffic."
"Before, the panel was right next to the road," Babbitt added. A person could get run over trying to look at it.
BLM officials approved the project with what Fred O'Ferrell, associate field manager for the Price Field Office, calls "a few absolutes":An archaeological survey was conducted, and all archaeological sites must be avoided.
The project must stay at least 300 feet from all sensitive structures and rock art.
Monitors, including a professional archaeologist, will check to ensure that seismic exploration won't harm ancient structures or art.
Suitability of Desolation Canyon and Jack Canyon wilderness study areas for wilderness designation will not be damaged.
Indian tribes will be fully consulted.
That isn't to say controversy surrounding the project has magically vanished. Steve Bloch, lawyer for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, is glad that the stipulations are in place but worries about impacts down the road.
Bill Barrett Corp. has long-range plans, he said. "There's no doubt that their intensive efforts in the region are going to change the character of Nine Mile Canyon."
How much change will happen is another of those long-term debates. Meanwhile, the Barrett Corp. was showing the media and other interested spectators what impacts their seismic surveys have.
When the five vibroseis trucks throttled up and jiggled the ground, Elliott hovered over his seismograph, checking the intensity of earth movement.
"Very low," he said. The peak particle velocity was far beneath the 0.75 feet per second allowed at the 50-foot mark. It was 0.17 or 0.18 feet per second there, and 0.27 at 40 feet.
"Way below level," Elliott said.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com