"In 1989, a rancher stalking a mountain lion in the Book Cliffs region of Utah, southeast of Salt Lake City, discovered a network of Fremont Indian community sites dating to 900 and possibly being up to 4,500 years old.

It was one of many such sites Waldo Wilcox had stumbled across since purchasing the 4,200-acre ranch in 1951. Up until Wilcox sold the ranch for $2.5 million two years ago to a San Francisco land trust group, which turned it over to the state of Utah, he withheld knowledge of the sites and chased off the occasional hiker or the wayward lost.

He kept it so well hidden that modern American Indian tribes that claim Fremont ancestry in Utah and the surrounding region, including four New Mexico pueblos, didn't learn of the sites until earlier this month, when about 50 reporters were given a tour of the prehistoric settlements by state archaeologists."

Get the Story:
Indan Eddie: In Utah, tribes are being included (The Albuquerque Tribune 7/28)

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