GeoSights: Handprints in the Entrada Sandstone at Kodachrome Basin State Park, Kane County
by Jim Davis
The Kodachrome Basin State Park petrosomatoglyphs can be seen to the right of the rock shelter from the Panorama Trail. The lowest handprint on this wall is 17 inches above the ground.
Asmall rock shelter off a 40-foot spur from the Panorama Trail in Kodachrome Basin State Park could go unnoticed in this remarkably scenic park. Yet with a keen eye you will discover at the shelter more than one hundred handprints scored into the sandstone, as if hands had scooped out the rock.
These handprints are a type of petroglyph called petrosomatoglyphs. Greek for “stone,” “body,” and “to carve,” they depict human or animal body parts. When you press your hand into clay or wet cement, you have made a petrosomatoglyph. Many petrosomatoglyphs around the world are tied to folklore or sanctified and are thought to be footprints of pilgriming spiritual figures or are the marks of mythical creatures.
The earliest petrosomatoglyphs were documented in 2018 and are located at 14,000 feet elevation at Quesang on the Tibetan Plateau. Radiometric dating places their creation to between 169 to 226 thousand years before present. Locals there believe the prints are linked to Buddha. The prints were made by two humans, or a closely related species, about ages seven and twelve that deliberately pressed their feet and hands, respectively, into calcareous mud at an ancient hot spring. Once the mineral-rich flow of spring water changed course, the muck dried and eventually lithified into travertine, preserving the group of prints.
Some petrosomatoglyphs, like petroglyphs, are carved, struck, or pecked into stone using a tool. However, the prints at Kodachrome Basin are distinctive in that they were created by the originator’s hands rubbing the wall of sandstone. With each swipe of the hand across the rock, sand grains are dislodged as the brittle cement holding them together fails from the stress of friction. With repetition, imprints advance deeper into the rock. The most extreme handprints at Kodachrome are etched 4 to 5 inches into the stone and are several hand lengths long.
Not every rock type is suitable for making these hand impressions. It must be weak enough for fingers to hollow out. The orange-red to orange-brown-colored Gunsight Butte Member of the Jurassic-age Entrada Sandstone is a very fine to fine-grained wind-blown (eolian) deposit of quartz sandstone that erodes into slickrock, walls, overhangs, pillars, and rock shelters such as the alcove at Kodachrome. The sand grains are barely cemented together with calcite making the sandstone so friable that a species of native bee excavates nests directly into the rock.
The quantity of handprints at Kodachrome is extraordinary. Although similar petrosomatoglyphs exist in the Intermountain West and American Southwest, the nearest groupings of hands in stone are found 335 miles to the northeast at White Mountain, north of Rock Springs, Wyoming, where an assemblage of handprints is in a water-laid (fluvial) quartz sandstone of the Early Eocene-age Wasatch Formation. A south-facing cliff of the outcrop is peppered with cavities and hollows and several rock shelters are at the ground level. The petrosomatoglyphs are on a boulder, sometimes referred to as the “birthing rock,” a few feet from the base of a cliff that has extensive petroglyphs from different time periods.
In 2009, Kodachrome-type petrosomatoglyph groupings were also documented at Meseta Tutacachi, Oruro Department, Bolivia. There, an estimated 187 handprints are on seven panels on walls of a plateau. The prints are in the Miocene-age Crucero Formation—a light- to dark-brown water-laid (fluvial and lacustrine) sandstone with volcanic influences and clay lenses. Although the time required to create a handprint in the Gunsight Butte Member is unknown, researchers found that Meseta Tutacachi prints took approximately 3 to 5 minutes to make.
The process of forming the Kodachrome petrosomatoglyphs might not have been completed at one point in time. They could have evolved, perhaps spanning generations. At Kodachrome, most of the finger grooves are smooth whereas the surrounding sandstone, such as that above the handprints, is highly spalled and flaking off the surface. This weathering is the result of subflorescence, where water percolates through the sandstone and mineral salts crystalize within the rock as the water dries, prying thin surface layers of sandstone apart. Spalling is also enhanced by temperature, freeze-thaw, and wetting-drying cycles.
Some handprints at Kodachrome are not smooth and some are barely evident, nearly blending in with the adjacent unworked sandstone. The advanced weathering of these handprints indicates an older age for the surface of the stone. Though the smooth prints could have old origins, park visitors appear to be actively scouring the surface of the sandstone. When one encounters the hands, there is a natural impulse to touch and mirror the method of the original facilitator*. Accordingly, their subsequent deepening is akin to the pervasive human phenomena of “statue rubbing,” where solid stone or bronze statues are visibly worn down due to ritualistic rubbing through the centuries or millennia.
How to get to the Handprints in the Entrada Sandstone at Kodachrome Basin State Park, Kane County
How to Get There
Drive north from the Kodachrome Basin State Park visitor’s center to the Panorama trailhead. From there hike 1,900 feet to a fork in the trail. Take the right fork and go another 1,250 feet. The rock shelter will be visible at the beginning of a bend in the trail.
