Cold Spring Cave, Buttler Wash, Utah

Cold Spring Cave is a great spot to look at the ruin in Butler Wash, Utah. It is only 2 mile out and back. Many things to look at the dwelling. 

Adults' handprints

First is there are many handprints. Obviously some are adult size handprints, and interestingly there are many small handprints, possibly children's handprints. It is common to see handprints in Anasazi ruin spots, but I don't recall to see small handprints. 

The left picture shows upper row with bigger handprints and lower row with small handprints. Considering their relatively small body sizes compared to modern human, it could be all adults. Interestingly there are two colors of handprints, orange color is easier to see in the picture but you might notice there are several white color handprints as well. 

The left picture shows more clear white handprints. Big hands. 

Another pattern and color of handprints. Spiral handprints? Interesting. 

Okay, I talked a lot about handprints, but there is so much to see at this site. The left picture is kiva. Nicely preserved the structure of round shaped kiva. 

A part of kiva structure. Fire is involved in the kiva (black stain) and the hole is likely to be air flow to keep the fire going. It is great to see this structure long after there kiva ceremony. 

Another fascinating thing about this site is that you can see numerous grinder places like you see in the left picture. Corn, flour, whatever was ground here. Even corn is left in the hole. One corn is about the size of middle index finger. Their corns are much much smaller than modern corns. At the cove, we saw easily more than 30 grinder places. I guess many people lived there! Interestingly animal (bighorn sheep) petroglyph is observed right under the grinding place. I had never seen petroglyph and grinder just next each other. 

Finally, the left picture is cold spring in the cave. The reason why this hike is called cold spring cave. Clearly people chose this place for living due to reliable water (and good water) source in the dry desert. This is the most back of all the buildings, kiva, granaries. 

Before the spring, there is tall wall with peep holes (left picture). Likely to protect spring. We saw 3 people from nearby town Bluff in the cave and she told us that people (especially women/children) here hid back of the tall wall when enemy came and check them through the peep holes. As I mentioned in the other entry about Moon House, each peep hole is designed to check a specific direction. Interestingly, the big rock used here at the bottom of wall has holes used for grinding. It is vertical, so my hypothesis is that, they used the big rock used to be grinding area to make the defending wall to be tall. Because cave is relatively dark due to limited sunlight coming, the light from peep holes are shining in the picture. 

The lady from Bluff was quite surprised about the fact we came to the Cold Spring Cave all the way from Mass. She said that she had never even seen people from New England before. She said, "Are you lost?" 

She said that several hundreds of curving rock can be found in the cold spring cave as you can see in the left picture. It might be used to make motor (between rocks to make wall, ruin etc). 

Very fascinating place.