Not long ago we came across a most unusual site – pictographs in an old mining adit.
“Be Hip or Be Square” Pictographs
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Tag Archives: rock art
“Hidden In View” Pictographs
Sometimes you wander through the desert and find a bounty of pictographs tucked into a small overhang or in a hollow in an otherwise very ordinary looking boulder.
Other times, your heart beats a little faster as you happen upon a magnificent overhanging cliff face and feel sure the jackpot is just ahead … only to find a sparse smattering of tiny elements, if anything!
Black Canyon – “Transformation” Petroglyphs
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.
Coyote Hole Petroglyphs
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.
“Midgewater Madness” Pictographs and Petroglyphs
This is a pretty nice site of pictographs and petroglyphs but my main memory of the visit is of being miserably itchy, since we were plagued by hordes of no-see-ums! They had a great time finding spots to land and had a feast wherever they ended up. With long sleeves and a bug net the visit would have been better, but we did not expect to be swarmed and were not prepared at all!
“Sweet Seventeen” Pictographs
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.
“Desolation of Disappointment” Petroglyphs
Early Autumn can be pretty toasty in California’s desert regions, and last September saw us head out to a petroglyph site while wishing the weather was maybe 15 to 20 degrees cooler. On top of that, we weren’t sure if what we would find would be worth it! We’d read some site descriptions from other visitors, and while those descriptions stressed the sheer quantity of petroglyphs, they also mentioned disquieting phrases like “poorly pecked” and “indistinct”. Still, we wouldn’t know what was there until we went to look, would we?
Burham Canyon Pictographs
The pictograph site in Burham Canyon is well-known and easy to find – and it shows. Fresh dirt bike tracks run right up to it and empty Coors Light cans are wedged into the cracks in the rock outcropping.
Golden Hills Pictographs
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.
Twin Tanks area Petroglyphs
Reaching the Twin Tanks area in Joshua Tree National Park from the Twin Tanks backcountry board requires a little bit of a hike, either cross country proper or up a wide wash.
The tanks referred to are dams built by cattle ranchers to enhance natural tanks that were used for years prior by the Native Americans who lived in the area.
The tanks are interesting enough by themselves, but today’s entry is about the older history of the area.