Wolfe Ranch

 

Wolfe Ranch is located a short distance from the Delicate Arch parking lot. There is pit toilet style bathrooms at the trail head. A short path over Salt Wash leads to a small 17 x 15 foot, one room cabin. The cabin and lot were built and settled by John Wesley Wolfe who was 69 years old at the time he moved to the area. He traveled from his home in Ohio in 1898 with his eldest son for a drier climate due to a leg injury he suffered in the Civil War. The cabin is made from cottonwood logs and are original and was actually built is 1906 when Wolfe’s daughter arrived with her husband and two children.  The property was 100 acres and Wolfe had several heads of cattle and ran it as the Bar DX Ranch. They returned to Ohio in 1910 where John Wesley Wolfe remained until his passing in 1913.

Located off a side trail from the Delicate Arch Trail and the access trail to the Wolfe Ranch cabin is a single panel panel of petroglyphs featuring a hunting scene. Created by the Ute some time between 1650 and 1850, the panel is well preserved and very clear to identify what is happening in the scene. Do not touch the rock art.