Cedar Mesa is a plateau in San Juan County in the southeastern corner of Utah. It extends from Elk Ridge in the north, Comb Wash to the east, the gorge of the San Juan river to the south, and the Grand Gulch to the west, an area of 400 square miles. The Cedar Mesa plateau sits at an elevation of 6,500 feet, surrounded by terrain sloping down to 4,200 feet, leading to the formation of numerous canyons, cliffs, and other erosional features on the edges of the mesa. Scattered throughout these canyons are cliff dwellings of the Ancient Puebloans. The Bureau of Land Management has documented 1700 sites in the 650 square miles of Cedar Mesa and Grand Gulch plateau. Most of the structures date to 900-1300 A.D., while the rock art panels contain images from the late Archaic period as well as recent Navajo and Hopi figures. The San Juan-Anasazi complex encompassing the Cedar Mesa Plateau perhaps holds the highest density of prehistoric sites in the United States.
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