The Bureau of Land Management dates the district's name to 1776, when Fathers Dominguez and Escalante traveled through the Douglas Creek valley and noted numerous examples of ancient Native American rock art; the Spanish name means Painted Canyon. The district covers more than 16,000 acres of public land along 15 miles of State Highway 139 south of Rangely. The oldest panels belong to the Fremont culture, whose rock art in this region archaeologists place in the centuries before about 1300 CE; named panels include the Kokopelli panel, the Waving Hands panel, and sites along Douglas Creek.

Rock art of this kind is not decoration. Many Native communities in the region regard such images as communications with living meaning, and Fremont descendants and Ute communities hold these places as heritage; the BLM asks visitors not to touch, chalk, or trace the panels. Attribution of individual panels is often uncertain: Fremont, Ute, and later inscription layers sit in the same canyons, and specific meanings are not recoverable with confidence. Access is informal, with no visitor center, which is both the district's openness and its vulnerability.

Visiting

BLM Canyon Pintado National Historic District. Free; contact the White River Field Office in Meeker, Colorado for conditions and permits. Interpretive sites lie directly off Highway 139 beginning about 3 miles south of Rangely; some involve short walks, and there is no water and limited services.

Photo: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons ([source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dinosaur_Diamond_Prehistoric_Highway_-_Rock_Art_in_Canyon_Pintado_-_NARA_-_7718088.jpg))