Dec 19, 2025 - News

Mormon church returns ancient rock art to Indigenous custody

Erin Alberty

Petroglyphs on a boulder that was removed from a mountain in northern Utah. — A petroglyph-covered rock that has been returned to its original site after spending eight decades in a churchyard, where members moved it from the mountains near the Idaho-Utah border. Photo: Courtesy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has returned a boulder containing 1,200-year-old Fremont petroglyphs to its original site in northern Utah, about 80 years after members removed it and put it on display at a chapel.

Why it matters: The location is a sacred gathering place in the mountains for the Northwest Band of the Shoshone Nation, the band's vice chair, Brad Parry, said in a church statement.

"Our history is so fractured with a lot of things that happened to us," Parry said. "To have these positive things now that are coming out — it's rebuilding our history. And I can't overstate that."

Zoom in: The 2,500-pound rock was displayed outside a church meetinghouse in Tremonton after a group of members removed it by hand for reasons that Ryan Saltzgiver, the church's history sites curator, described as "a mystery."

The Logan Herald Journal reported that Boy Scouts removed the art from the Connor Springs area near Penrose in Box Elder County.
It likely was taken "not out of malice, but out of a lack of proper understanding," said David Bolingbroke, a research and outreach historian for the church.

How it worked: In 2011, "amateur archeologists" matched the petroglyphs to a 1937 rock art survey that showed the original location, per the church statement.

Specialists freed it from the concrete where it was displayed and carefully cleaned lichen that grew over the images while it sat in Tremonton.

The latest: The art was returned to its home near the Idaho border on Dec. 11.

A Shoshone spiritual leader gave a blessing.

Context: The rock art remained at the chapel until at least 2019, when the Herald Journal reported it was still there.

"The Church History Department has been diligently working on the best way to repatriate this sacred petroglyph since discussions with State and Tribal leaders began around 2012," church spokesperson Kelly Smoot wrote in a statement to Axios.

What they're saying: The church had "no legal obligation" to return the art, Saltzgiver said, but "we do have a moral and ethical obligation to care for things like this that are in our possession — and in particular to return those things that are, in this case, very sacred objects to those rightful owners."

What it shows: The art depicts people and animals, possibly antelope or bighorn sheep, the Herald Journal reported in 2019.

Threat level: The church and the NWB aren't disclosing the location to protect the art from further tampering.

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Mormon church returns ancient rock art to Indigenous custody

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