Not long ago we came across a most unusual site – pictographs in an old mining adit.
The adit entrance. On the left, a little past my backpack in the foreground, are a few small pictographs. The main panel is peeking out in the center of the photo.
There is often uncertainty surrounding the dating of pictographs in particular, with guesses ranging from a hundred years or less, to thousands of years old.
In this case, because of their location inside an adit, we have a definite floor for the age of the pictographs: the first silver mining claims in this area was made in the 1860’s and historical graffiti overlaying the pictographs seem to pin them as dating to before 1862 – so we can say with some confidence that these pictographs are about 150 years old at the time of writing, and were apparently made in the adit when the adit itself was brand new.
Venture in a little further and you can see that the pictograph panel is worth a look.
The adit these are in is not deep, but it is kind of scary to go in! The sides are solid rock, and that is good. But the ceiling is only a conglomerate!
I hesitated at the mouth of the adit, glancing uncertainly at what looked like nothing but dried mud and wishful thinking holding up the tons of rock above my head.
Peering into the gloom I saw plenty of red pigment on the right-hand wall, some distance in, so I resolutely gripped my camera and went in.
There was plenty of bat guano and rat droppings about and as I walked in I tried to remember exactly how hantavirus is transmitted ( it involves poop, right? But does it involve rat poop, bat poop, mouse poop, or all of the above? I don’t know what kind of poop this is, it is too dark to see. Probably all three kinds. So don’t kick up any dust! )
My companion ducked in for a quick look before fleeing the dankness and the droppings, expressing a preference for examining the photos later from the comfort of a desk chair.
Wise move, but someone had to take the photos … !
The pictographs right by the entrance on the left side are quite small. There is no trace of any other pictographs around these.
DStretch shows a delicate little symbol above the more easily visible zig-zag line, and also two dots, opposite each other on both sides of a crack. This motif of dots around a crack I’ve seen once before – hundreds of miles away at the Comet Cave site.
I creep deeper down the adit and the main panel comes into view. It is very nice, worth the venture. The elements are basically all simple Abstract shapes. Zig-zags and squiggle lines dominate.
With DStretch the zig-zag elements are clearer. Elsewhere in the Great Basin, such as at the Choo-Choo Train site on the Volcanic Tablelands, there are also zig-zag elements painted in small cave overhangs. Both this site and those are in the Northern Paiute-Shoshone’s territory.
After fully rounding the first jagged outcropping I see historical graffiti overlaying the pictographs. “1862, B.P.D”.
The pictographs continue a little further past this graffiti. There is also some additional graffiti: It looks like the spidery white writing might say “1950” and in the top right of this picture there is another date in black: 1910. ( You probably need to click the image to get the full-size version in order to see these dates. )
This DStretch algorithm washes out the black so we can concentrate on the red pictographs. From left to right: squiggle lines, a little double rainbow and another squiggle line, a basic anthropomorph with some hash marks and another squiggle line higher up, then a large fishbone motif and a rack of tally lines.
I found this site fascinating. Why were the pictographs painted inside a mining adit? Pictographs were often painted in a place of spiritual significance, or as part of a ceremony. Rock overhangs and shelters were often viewed as a literal gateway to the spirit world and the images were painted during a vision quest to aid the shaman on his journey, or at a site of power, to warn away casual visitors.
Right at the back of the adit are two inauthentic symbols. They look fairly old but they were most likely made by miners or other pioneers.
Did a shaman find the adit after the miners left, and, aghast at the passage that was ripped open to the spirit world, painted these images as a ward? Or found the adit a convenient entrance to use? There are some natural caves with pictographs in this area too, as well as plenty of mines and adits with no pictographs.
Fur trappers entered the area about a decade before mining activities started as the first European settlers to the area, so the clash of cultures was still raw at the time when these were painted.
The ore in the mountain range this adit was sunk into did not amount to much and there are no mines nearby. The adit was probably abandoned soon after it was made and mining activities moved on to more profitable places. I did some research trying to establish when the adits in this region was made and did not unearth anything: it seems that they were not important.
A closer look at the lower left portion of the panel. Most of the pictographs are in good shape, but those in the upper left have become indistinct as water seepage deposits minerals over the pigment. Take a close look at the element in the bottom right, the one that’s a horizontal line with a dot at the right end, and some dashes above and below it. The lower part of that looks like a design at the Swansea Site. If you followed the link I had on that page about some of the more interesting theories about it, you’d know that some people thought the similar symbol found at that site depicted a horse.
This shows the remainder of the panel, towards the entryway from the previous picture. The tally lines are connected to the next prominent panel via two vertical squiggle lines. There are also some small circles drawn on the side of the concave hollow separating the two areas of the rock.
After I took pictures I packed up thoughtfully. The adit is some way up the mountainside and from the shelf by its entrance we had a commanding view of the basin below, which stretched featureless into the distance: perfectly flat, dotted here and there with rural outposts that became more concentrated, building up towards a small town in the distance. All was quiet in the golden hour before sunset.
The long summer had dried out the vegetation and our socks and boots were shot through with all kinds of grass seeds and other prickly things. I bent down to remove a few of the most annoying ones.
In the distance our vehicle was a pinprick of bright red. We had chosen this color on purpose – easy to spot on the return journey when we go bushwhacking!
We might have driven closer to the site but a closed cattle gate had deterred me from driving up the faint two-track beyond it so we took a better-travelled road that required some additional walking instead. The gate was also the kind that is just some logs strung together with barbed wire then stretched taunt and hooked into a couple of loops around the fence post — an excellent way to get yourself gift-wrapped in a gate if you’re not careful!
I didn’t mind the walk much: I like walking in the desert in the late afternoon and early evening, when the air is still and quiet and the day’s heat is slipping away. Even the shabbiest desert turns beautiful when the shadows stretch long and cool across the landscape, throwing every little pebble into sharp relief.
We stowed our hats and sunglasses and picked our way down the rubble of the adit before tackling the crumbly mountainside, careful not to dislodge rocks on each other. Once we reached the alkali flats below we walked back towards our vehicle.
Our travels in the area was not done yet. This area has a lot of stories to tell and a lot of old history to look for. We would visit more of it in the days to come.
For now, we left this site as we found it, except for our bootprints momentarily left on the coarse floor of the adit. If you visit, make sure to do the same, and to think about what this site was: an intersection of cultures, beliefs, and people during a fateful time in the area’s history. Everything inside and around this adit is now a precious snapshot of the way things were in the past. Leave it undisturbed. Tell your own story in a place where it will not disturb the stories that came before.
Those are some pretty nice pictographs. Thank goodness for DStretch.
DStretch is fantastic. AMAZING, even. This was another really nice site to visit. I wish I spent a bit more time inside, but the adit was dank and the smell of various rodent scat was rather overpowering. If I return I’ll be sure to bring something to put over my nose and mouth!