Four hundred footprints
Early Jurassic Signed and interpreted Free
Roughly two hundred million years ago, at least two kinds of large dinosaurs walked across wet sand here, and the sand later turned to stone with the prints still in it. The Warner Valley trackway holds something on the order of four hundred of them, and they are not behind glass or roped off in a visitor center. They are in the rock, in the open, where the animals left them.
The walk from the parking area is short and flat, and there is interpretive signage that explains what you are looking at, which genuinely helps because untrained eyes need a minute to resolve a footprint from ordinary weathering. Once you see the first one, you start seeing them everywhere.
This is the most quietly extraordinary thing near Washington City and one of the least visited, mostly because getting here requires a dirt road and a small amount of resolve. That is also exactly why it stays good.
They are not behind glass or roped off in a visitor center. They are in the rock, in the open, where the animals left them.
Fort Pearce, 1866
Stone ruins On the old wagon road Free
In the southern part of the valley stand the low stone walls of Fort Pearce, put up by area settlers in 1866. It was built at a reliable water source on the wagon route that ran between the settlements and the country to the south, which is the whole reason it exists: in this landscape, control of water was control of everything.
It was one of several outposts built during a period of conflict between the settlers and the Native people of the region, and it is worth standing there with that in mind rather than treating it as scenery. What survives is a shell, weathered and open to the sky, and it does not take long to walk.
The site sits close enough to the trackway that most people do both in one trip, and the pairing is part of what makes the drive out here worth it. Two hundred million years and one hundred and sixty in the same afternoon.
The panels in the wash
Petroglyphs and a pictograph Below the fort Free
A short walk downhill from the fort takes you into Pearce Wash, where there are petroglyphs pecked into the rock and at least one notable painted panel. Ancestral Puebloan and later peoples left them, and they predate the fort by a very long way. There is also nineteenth century settler graffiti nearby, which is its own strange layer of the same story.
The etiquette here is not negotiable and it is simple. Look, photograph from a distance, and touch nothing. Skin oils damage the panels, chalk and water destroy them, and every mark somebody adds is permanent. These have survived a thousand years or more, and whether they survive the next fifty is genuinely up to visitors.
If you have children with you, brief them before you get there rather than at the panel. It works considerably better.
Do not touch the rock art. No hands, no chalk, no water, no rubbings, and never add anything of your own. Damaging archaeological sites on public land is also a federal offense.
The road is the hard part
Graded dirt Condition varies a lot Check before you go
Everything difficult about this trip happens before you get out of the car. Warner Valley Road runs south from the Washington Fields area as graded dirt, and its condition swings from perfectly fine in a normal sedan to rough and washboarded enough to rattle your teeth, depending entirely on when it was last graded and what the weather has done since.
A vehicle with reasonable ground clearance makes it comfortable rather than tolerable. After rain, the surface can be genuinely poor and low spots hold water, so give a storm a couple of days. Do not attempt it with a trailer, and understand that a tow out here would be expensive and slow.
Go with a full tank, real water, and a downloaded map, because cell coverage is unreliable once you drop into the valley. None of that is meant to scare you off. It is a normal Southern Utah backroad and thousands of people drive it every year. It just is not a paved national park road, and people who expect one have a bad time.
When to go, and what to bring
October through April No shade at all
There is no shade in Warner Valley. None, anywhere, at any point in the trip. That single fact sets the season: October through April is comfortable, the shoulder months are fine if you go in the morning, and midsummer midday is a bad idea rather than a hot one.
Bring more water than the short walking distances suggest, sun protection you would consider excessive, and shoes rather than sandals, because the ground is rocky and there is cryptobiotic soil crust in places that you should stay off. A hat that stays on in wind matters more here than most places.
Go in the morning if you can. The low angled light picks the tracks out of the rock far better than midday sun, which flattens everything, and the same is true at the rock art panels. Photographers already know this. Everyone else finds out afterwards.
Local notes on Warner Valley
- This is undeveloped public land. There are no restrooms, no water, no trash service, and no ranger station. Whatever you bring in comes back out with you.
- Tell somebody where you are going. It is not remote in absolute terms, but it is empty enough that a breakdown means waiting, and the cell signal is not dependable.
- The tracks and the panels are protected sites. Walking on them, moving stones, or collecting anything is both damaging and illegal. Photograph and leave.
- The southern edge of Washington Fields is the closest part of the city to all of this, which is worth knowing if backcountry access matters in a house search.
