Westwater Ruin & Edge of the Cedars

The Westwater Ruin is an Ancestral Pueblo canyon rock alcove site just south of Blanding in southeast Utah. It is located about 2 miles west along road 1200 South, which isn't marked.

The Westwater Ruin is an overlook site. I didn't see an easy trail across the canyon, though it looked like the agile could probably get over there.

Westwater Ruins is thought to have at least 13 ground level rooms and 5 kivas. There were also probably some upper level rooms. The site may have been occupied as early as 750 AD and abandoned by 1300.
This canyon has other ruins nearby, including the pueblo at the Edge of the Cedars Museum.
 

Down the canyon is to the south and the canyon appears to get deeper. There is some riparian habitat at the bottom of the canyon indicating permanent water. Up the canyon to the north the Blue Mountains are visible. This site has a good road going out to it, but there is no interpretive information and it doesn't appear to be protected except by its difficult location.
 

Edge of the Cedars is a Utah State Park in central Blanding. There is a partially excavated Ancestral Pueblo site there with a small museum. This is a site that appears to have had three lives. The first occupation lasted from 825 to 950 and the second from 1050 to 1125. In the early 1200s there was some remodeling with the site thought to be vacant during the intervals in between.

Then as now there were advantages to this location including the fine views of the nearby Abajo Mountains. The Edge refers to the biological boundary between the sagebrush fields and the Pinon Pine and Juniper forests. The trail here is short and visitors have to pass though the museum to get to the ruins site.

There is a reconstructed kiva than can be entered. The excavated sections of the site show part of the Great House. About 17 rooms and two kivas are visible. There is an unexcavated Great Kiva on the south side, appearing as a circular depression.

The abutment joints of walls show that the site was remodeled over a period of time. The stones used in building the site are a mix of flat tabular sandstone that had to be carried a long distance and more local chunky rocks. In the chunky layers, small chinking stones were used.

The Museum has a large collection of ancient pottery. At many of the ancient sites looting by collectors occurred before the sites were protected, so it's rare to see a lot of preserved ones on display.

Edge of the Cedars is a good place to find red ware pots, found mostly in southeast Utah and northeast Arizona.  It is common to find pottery shards in the region and it is odd to think that the shards have been laying there for 700 years.

There is also a sculpture near the ruins site that replicates some of the archaeoastronomy sites in the southwest. In some locations, spears of light hit spirals or other symbols on the significant days of the solar year.