Montezuma Creek Road in Southeast Utah

Hello and welcome to another Cactus Hill Adventure.Today we are exploring Montezuma Canyon Road in Southeast Utah near the city of Blanding, Utah. “MCR” is a well-maintained county dirt/gravel road with a designation of San Juan County Road 187. Almost any vehicle can drive this road, but I would recommend some type of SUV or Truck with a little ground clearance. There are two main places of interest along the road…The “Bradford Canyon Ruins” and “The Three Kiva Pueblo” site. Other areas of interest, but they are smaller in size, are “Honeycomb Ruins” and “Hidden Ruins”
There are multiple ways to get to the Bradford Canyon Ruins and the 3 Kiva Pueblo via the Montezuma Canyon Road depending upon your direction of travel. We came from the North on US Hwy 191 so I will give you those directions. Turn off US Hwy 191 approximately 5 miles south of Monticello just 1/10 of a mile past mile marker 67 and turn left onto the dirt/graveled Montezuma Canyon Road. You will then travel approximately 25 miles to the Bradford Ruins. Although, along the entire route (Approximately 42 Miles) there are multiple cliff dwellings, granaries, and petroglyphs all up and down Montezuma Canyon so keep a sharp look out for these areas. We used a book entitled “Utah Backcountry Adventures” by Peter Massey and Jeanne Wilson and they have an extensive write-up on this area. They have books and maps for most of the Western United States and their website is https://4wdbooks.com.
The “Three Kiva Pueblo”, that is further South down the road past the Bradford Canyon Ruins, is the most prominent ruin with the Bradford Canyon Ruins a close second. Please watch our video “Three Kiva Pueblo – Southeastern Utah” on this same channel and I will include a link to it at the end of this video. Unfortunately, due to “Operator Error” (Me) the GoPro footage South of the Bradford Canyon Ruins was filmed in “Time Lapse” mode and is unusable…Sorry. I have included some still photos of places of interest past the BCR and they are arranged in “Travel Order”. If you do decide to take this adventure plan on a full day.
One more item of note…I have included all the “Road” GoPro video up to the Bradford Canyon Ruins and most of it is at 20X speed. I wanted to show the road conditions to show you that this is a decent dirt/gravel road and also let you know that the first 15 miles or so is inhabited with “Modern” dwellings with a lot of private property on both sides of the road.
We enjoyed this adventure and took time to stop and explore along the way and we recommend that you do the same. Take care and hope to see you out there on our next adventure and remember “You won’t know if you don’t go!”.
Links:
https://www.americansouthwest.net/utah/montezuma-canyon/index.html
https://www.americansouthwest.net/utah/montezuma-canyon/photographs.html