Slot canyons
Horseshoe Canyon
A separate unit of Canyonlands, reached on long dirt roads, that holds the Great Gallery, one of North America’s best-known panels of Barrier Canyon-style rock art.
Horseshoe Canyon was added to Canyonlands National Park in 1971. It sits on its own, far from the park’s other districts. The Park Service says it contains some of the most significant ancient rock markings in North America. The best known, the Great Gallery, has life-size painted figures without arms or legs, in the Barrier Canyon style the park dates to roughly 2000 BCE to 500 CE. Artifacts in the area go back as far as 9000 to 7000 BCE.
Later chapters show too. Outlaws, Butch Cassidy among them, used the maze of canyons around Robbers Roost in the late 1800s. Ranchers built stock trails and a pumping system in the early 1900s, and prospectors widened the trails in the mid-1900s. Today visitors walk down an old ranch road from the west rim.
The hike to the Great Gallery is 7 miles round trip with a 780-foot descent at the start, and the climb out at the end. The park calls it strenuous, plans on five hours or more, and recommends a gallon of water per person. Pets are not allowed on the trail or below the rim, and there is no camping in the canyon inside the park.
Safety
The park warns the hike can be dangerously hot in summer and suggests starting very early or after 4 p.m. in June, July and August.