This site is located in the middle of some suburban sprawl to the west of Tehachapi. The site was brought public attention by 14-year old Jennifer Dellons in the 1970’s, via a letter she wrote to UCLA because she was concerned that the site might be damaged or destroyed by the development springing up around it. Her letter helped made sure that the site was recorded and preserved.
An overview of the site, which is tucked in between houses in a rural suburban development. The main pictograph panel is to the right, behind the informational sign. The rock shelter also has a beautiful, extensive pictograph ( partly concealed by soot deposits ) on its ceiling.
Site access is from a cul-de-sac with a small sign pointing the way to the pictographs.
The site is fenced in with chainlink fencing and is almost perfectly preserved and free from vandalism.
This was a fantastic site visit. We had visited Burham Canyon earlier in the day and stopped for lunch in Tehachapi before moving on to visit this site.
Our timing was great: we got to explore the main site at Burham Canyon and escape the maze of jeep roads before the rain that threatened during that visit came down. We were back on the blacktop, snug and dry, as it rained during the drive from Burham Canyon to Tehachapi.
We were driving generally westerly before noon, so we got to see a great rainbow skipping along the road ahead of us while enjoying the sound of wind-driven rain on the windshield.
After lunch we made our way to this site. The air was now crisp and fresh, everything crystal clear after the rains, and the brilliant green of young grass and other vegetation made a nice contrast to the dry landscape you get used to seeing in inland California. The whole site was bathed in that special, ultra-saturated light that you get after a mountain rainstorm. My photos ended up looking like HDR hack jobs even though they were just single-exposure shots. Amazing, atmospheric visit to a great little site. We loved it!
As we got out of the vehicle a friendly black and white cat appeared out of nowhere and led the way to the site, tail held high. She weaved around the the informational sign, weaved around our legs, accepted some petting, and posed in front of the rock shelter next to the main pictograph panel. After working hard making sure the humans were happy and comfortable at the site and knew where all the sights were, she ducked under the fencing and took off, pursuing her feline interests. What a life for a cat! I hope she steers clear of coyotes and other wildlife that might look to harm her.
The entire main panel. You’ll want to click the image for a full-size view to follow along with the description that follows. There are a few distinct groupings on the rock face. At the top is a basic anthropomorph figure. Below, left to right, we see a partly washed away panel of circles and squiggle lines, two ribbon-like designs, and a larger panel of squiggle and circle chains.
The suspected anthropomorphic figure at the top of the panel. Upon closer inspection it isn’t complete – it is missing its left “arm” and there is no head. Maybe it isn’t an anthropomorph after all. Pay close attention to the rock face: do you see anything else that might be a faded pictograph?
We need DStretch to show us what used to be here: There’s a second figure next to this one ( and probably not where you thought it would be when you looked at the picture in natural color ). What’s more, DStretch shows that the left element was drawn as it appears now: there is no “arm” on its left side but it looks like the faded image did have two “arms” at the top of the figure.
This is the photo most commonly published by other visitors to this site, and with good reason! These two geometric designs are among the best preserved at the site, and certainly the most intricate, too.
Though the pictographs are clear enough to not need it, I still applied DStretch here so we can clearly see the subtleties of these designs. They both have the same overall shape – a single crossbar at the top joining the innermost vertical lines, and sides formed by three parallel lines that overlap each other left to right – but the leftmost element is made with carefully applied dots, the other with longer stripes.
This panel is little distance away from the shapes we just examined. It is more weathered, and it also exhibits what might be the only vandalism at this site. The rightmost design looks like the central piece may have been shot out with a firearm recently. I would like to track down a site recording from when this site was first documented in the 1970’s to see if this damage was recorded then.
A bit of DStretch is needed to truly appreciate this panel. The four parallel chain motifs are made up of alternate chain and squiggle designs. Though the ethnographic record doesn’t document this use at this site or for the Kawaiisu who likely made them, the chain motifs are often associated with male puberty rites and the zig-zag or diamond motifs with female rites. Perhaps that was the case here as well, and we just do not have ethnographic evidence to confirm this.
I looked around but I couldn’t find out very much about this site.
There is an informational sign posted in front of the main pictograph panel that speculates that the pictographs might be around 1,400 years old. In my limited experience with pictographs that is extremely unlikely – pictographs simply don’t survive that long when out in the open. The main panel is very weathered on any surface with even a bit of exposure. Some elements can only be seen with DStretch. At 4,200 feet elevation there is plenty of rain and snow in winter to wash the pigment away.
Here is a DStretch overview of most of the elements in the main panel. Most of the elements we’ve already looked at with DStretch, but there are a couple of new things here. First, there are two faint circle elements on the right, by the cross symbol. This overview also shows a part of the panel we haven’t looked at in detail yet, over on the left center, where the three parallel lines and the faded squiggle line are. There could be three additional parallel lines to the left of that arrangement – perhaps mirroring the three partially erased parallel lines.
Our guide enjoys a few bites of grass as she waits for us to finish looking around. In this picture there are also some additional elements we haven’t seen before in the top left quadrant – a squiggle line and a row of small circles.
The pigment in use and the general style of stippled lines is similar to pictographs found in Yokuts territory ( northwest of this site ) or some of the monochromatic panels in Chumash territory ( southeast of this site ). I can also see similarities between the pictographs at Alister’s Cave, south-east of here in Serrano territory, and the pictographs painted within the rock shelter, which we will look at next.
However, the panel itself is in Kawaiisu territory, and the Kawaiisu’s rock paintings and petroglyphs are an interesting study by themselves: while their petroglyphs follow the style of the desert ( Coso and Paiute, predominantly abstract ) their pictographs are much more elaborate and share elements with the Yokuts and Tübatulabal.
Now, let’s look at that rock shelter and the different style of pictographs inside!
The adjacent rock shelter looks really mysterious and interesting. The overhang is blackened from many fires but one of the surfaces to the rear escaped most of the soot damage and definitely has pictographs. Let’s awkwardly scoot closer and contort ourselves for a good look and several photographs!
Just inside the entrance I flop down and wield the camera to capture the large pictograph motif in this shelter. It seems like squiggle lines are a prominent motif at this site – first we saw squiggle lines outside this shelter, on the main panel, and now we see another large pictograph with squiggle lines inside the shelter. This long squiggle line ends in a motif of several small circles connected with parallel lines.
The elements are still clearly visible, but DStretch helps too. The number three seems to play a role at this site: the panel outside had several groupings of three parallel lines, and here we have three small circles connected together, and three lines coming out of the left of the large unclosed loop at the top. Of course, it is easy to fall prey to confirmation bias and discount all the elements that are *not* groups of three, but I will note that the Tübatulabal’s ritual number was said to be 3.
The shelter is a bit small and cramped but the extensive soot deposits point to the fact that it was well-used. The pictographs themselves would have been awkward to paint because of the rock slabs right under them. Still, the moment I laid eyes on the site the presence of the shelter sent a little tingle up my spine – it just had the instantly recognizable look of a habitation site.
I twist around to get the pictograph captured from a different angle. This shot shows most of the design. See how bright it still is? Let’s see what it looks like with DStretch.
There we go! Wow! There is a lot more hiding under the soot. A complex arrangement of small circles connected with double lines, and a burst symbol. This is fascinating stuff.
There are more designs on the lip of the shelter but they are hard to make out. They really are faded. Burrowing my shoulder blades down into the soft turf in the shelter, I hoist the camera, point it straight up, and squint through the viewfinder to capture this shot of the ceiling at the shelter entrance.
Ah! A huge set of parallel lines! This is interesting to me, because I’ve found other lines like this ( typically very faded, being right by the entrance ) at other rock shelters, such as the Petroglyphs and Pictographs and Mortars, Oh My! site, away to the south-east in Joshua Tree National Park ( and in Serrano territory ).
One more picture … let’s twist a little to the right, pray the ol’ spine holds up, and snap one more shot.
There we go! The parallel lines from a different angle. Whew. The wide-angle lens shows a really weird perspective here, but this illustrates how close to the lip of the shelter these elements are..
This was a very pleasant, peaceful visit to a well-preserved, well cared for site. I hope to find out a little more about this site some day – I did find some information but not very much.
If you visit, be as respectful as everyone else who has visited. Their actions at this site made your visit possible. Pay it forward.
Also keep in mind that this site had meaning for the people who created it. We don’t understand much, if anything, about why this site was made, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t respect it. Pay a respectful visit, think about the paintings and the great meaning they held for those who made them, and be mindful of the fact that you are in a place that was important and precious to other people at one time.
Don’t touch the pictographs: they are fragile so your touch will damage them – and your selfie doesn’t need your fingers on the pigment to be awesome.