Author Archives: peregriffwrites@gmail.com

Potwisha Pictographs

The Western Mono are an offshoot tribe from the Paiute, who travelled across the Sierra crest about 600 years ago to trade the desert on the eastern side of the mountain range for the acorns and pine nuts on the western slopes. They occupied a narrow range of land at higher elevation on the west side of the central Sierra and established villages all along the Kaweah River.

One of these villages, at about 2,000 feet elevation, was on our itinerary for the day. The remnants of the village, a rock shelter with pictographs and a lot of bedrock mortars, are right on the banks of the Kaweah River.

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“Diamond Solstice” Pictographs Part 1: The Pictographs

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This is a beautiful little site in Joshua Tree National Park that I first visited years ago. I’ve left off writing about it because I kept meaning to find out more about the rumors that this site has a “ray of light” pointing towards one of the elements on the summer solstice.

Well, I have some information about that for you too! Here, I will spend a post just looking at this site. While going back over my photos of the site, taken on multiple previous visits, I was struck by how pretty the site really is.

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Smoke Tree Wash Petroglyphs

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Smoke Tree Wash winds its way through Joshua Tree National Park’s southern portion, and if most Park visitors notice it, it is usually when they start wondering who named all these washes ( “Smoke Tree”? “Porcupine”? “Fried Liver“?? ) that the Park’s main road crosses.

If you’re up for a walk you might find some petroglyphs out in the flats, so that’s just what we set off to do one winter morning. We had our choice of walking along in the bed of the wash or kicking out and walking along some ridges, which is what we did. Our hard work mostly didn’t pay off ( so many rocks out there! So many! ) but we did find traces of an old trail – maybe an old Indian trail? Maybe a mining trail? No mining activity in the area that I know of though.

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“Borderline” Petroglyphs

“USMC Cache” – Joshua Tree National Park

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We found this site a couple of years ago on one of our looooonnnggg jaunts in the backcountry of Joshua Tree National Park. There we were, slouching through the desert, with many pounds of camera equipment and water on our backs, since we were there to revisit our “Lonely Ledge“, “Lonely Hollow” and “Lonely Falls” discoveries and thus we were humping my full arsenal of camera equipment through the desert.

This was after we had photographed, and in one case discovered, the three sites listed above. It was late afternoon, some miles of undulating, rocky, brushy terrain laid between us and our vehicle, and the afternoon was hot. I had packed a sleeveless shirt but no sunscreen, so I was definitely a bit baked when we stumbled across this site on our way back.

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“Centipede Cave” Pictographs

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Here is a little cave that was an unexpected boon. Earlier in the afternoon we had finally hunted down a rather extensive petroglyph site and were walking back towards our vehicle during the golden hour, taking a straight cut across country instead of the circuitous route that helped us find our earlier quarry.

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Wasp Nest Cave Pictographs

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We went hiking in the foothills of the Sierra on an absolutely perfect day – blue skies, fluffy clouds, a light breeze, an ambient temperature that was neither hot nor cold. Some distance from the trailhead, where the trail had petered out and we were going cross country, hopping or wading through the creek we were following, we came across something very unusual – a tubular cave in a small granite outcropping.

We do not pass such things by, so we climbed up and had a look. And we found pictographs, painted around the cave entrance and on the ceiling!

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“Monolith Alcove” Pictographs

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We visited this site with Guy Starbuck. Be sure to check out his writeup of it!

This site is really strange: out in the middle of nowhere, not close to any other sites or habitation sites. We looked all over in the area surrounding this site, excited, sure there would be more to see, but – no! We found a whole lot of nothing. Heh heh, sometimes that’s how it goes.

This site is probably Serrano, but it is hard to say. The tribal boundaries are not that clearly defined around JTNP. The complete lack of other artifacts like arrow points or pottery sherds makes it even harder to place. Some of the elements, like the crosses, also occur at some other isolated sites in the region, and sometimes at petroglyph sites too.

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Burnt Cave Pictographs

“Rain or Shine” Petroglyphs

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This is a site that we visited with Guy Starbuck. Thank you, Guy! This was a lot of fun.

Out in the open Mohave desert there is an outcropping of varnished desert stone, perched on the edge of a valley. The area around this outcropping has many more small boulders scattered on the soft ground. On some of these, as well as on some of the boulders forming the outcropping, are Abstract petroglyphs. Some of the designs are carved, others are pecked. Almost all are darkly revarnished and are often difficult to see.

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