Aiken Arch is located along a wash with numerous petroglyphs. After getting baked in the sun for a few miles it is a delight to duck into the sudden shade offered by the arch, which is all that’s left standing from a partly collapsed lava tube.
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Here is a rather nice part of the Counsel Rocks Archeological site. This is the hollow area underneath the boulder we looked at already in the “Approach” entry, the one with some rather inaccessible petroglyphs!
The Counsel Rocks rock art site is fairly well-known and very well-researched. The centerpiece of it is “Womb Rock”, thought by some to be linked to the Lone Woman of the Cave legend, and by others to be a solstice observation site, but there is a lot more to this area than just “Womb Rock”.
We visited in late spring and it was already getting to be a bit hot. But once we reached the site and started exploring the heat was forgotten. What a treasure! Continue reading
We visited this petroglyph site in mid-spring, on what turned out to be a pretty hot day. Instead of taking the Rings Loop trail, we parked in a different spot and approached the petroglyphs from the other side. This lead to a bit of consternation on my part, since the petroglyphs are all on the far side of the boulders, except for one very small panel, and I thought that we drove all the way out here for a couple of petroglyphs and I would have to apologize to my companion for creating such a journey for the sake of two petroglyphs!
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.
Along a heavily vandalized stretch of varnished rock one of the most interesting sites in the Mohave manages to hang on and escape damage. Among the many petroglyph elements at this site are panels that appear to illustrate a shaman transforming into his animal form.
This site is in Kawaiisu territory, like the Steam Wells site, where a similar theme of a shaman’s experience during a vision quest is depicted.
Close to downtown Joshua Tree, a few hundred yards from the nearest houses, you can find some petroglyphs rivaling any found inside Joshua Tree National Park itself. Though there are plenty of petroglyphs to see in JTNP, if you take the time to find them, the pictograph sites tend to be more impressive.
Coyote Hole is easily accessible and well-known to the locals. There is even a group working actively to protect the site, which is great to hear and also much needed: the wash these petroglyphs are found in is littered with graffiti. As if sporadic vandalism wasn’t enough of a threat the Army Corps of Engineers also stepped in in the 1960’s to help the destruction, blasting parts of the canyon to provide rock to line a nearby highway flood control underpass and destroying some of the petroglyphs in the process.
Boy, it is a good thing this site is easy to get to because we were tired when we visited it! The previous day was a long one, with about ten miles of 100% cross-country scrambling over terrain that was almost never flat.
The site sits in a wash that is a popular spot for the local ATV riders and you can basically drive right up to it, which we did. Don’t try it in a passenger vehicle though. You’d get stuck within the first ten feet once you leave pavement. I think this is the sandiest wash I’ve ever been to.
Obviously this site will be known to the locals if it is right next to a dirt road. There are quite a few sites around that are well-known and yet not within National Parks for protection. Some of them, like the Golden Hills pictograph site, are kept pristine. Others, like the Coyote Hole Petroglyph site, suffered vandalism and willful damage in the past but are now under the local community’s protection. Yet others were or still are a hotspot for vandalism, graffiti and neglect.
The petroglyphs at Steam Wells are well worth a visit. You’ll have to drive in on a dirt road that turns rough and sandy, and then hike about 3/4 of a mile up a wash to see them. Don’t try driving to this site in a 2WD vehicle or a passenger vehicle! Parts of the road are very rough, across sharp bedrock, or very sandy, and you will get stuck for sure. You’ll need 4WD, or else the ability to hike in from the nearest paved road – a journey of many miles.
This site is in the desert portion of Kawaiisu territory and is mostly made up of abstract Rectilinear petroglyphs, although there are also some Representational bighorn sheep and shaman figures.
The Squaw Spring petroglyph site is a very small site consisting of a few petroglyphs on a rock outcropping some distance away from the spring. This site is in Kawaiisu territory. The Kawaiisu also lived in the Greenhorn mountains around Tehachapi where they painted very elaborate pictographs. To me the contrast between the art in their desert territory and their mountain territory is quite marked.