Category Archives: vandalism

“Blasted Bursts” Pictographs

This is a spectacularly large rock shelter, but unfortunately it is extensively vandalized and damaged by illegal camp fires. On top of that, the graffiti that used to be there was cleaned up by power washing the shelter! Yikes, that couldn’t have been good for the pictographs.

Despite all this damage … if you take the time to look closely, you can still find the remnants of some pictographs on the walls. The number of elements is very low for the size of the shelter, and mostly consists of burst elements. This shelter probably made a very good living area during the summer months. Maybe that is why it wasn’t covered in a whole lot of pictographs.

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Shelter Rock Pictographs

I’ve read some very interesting research into this site’s purported usage as a solstice observatory site. I personally haven’t had much luck with solstice observatories so I haven’t yet investigated this aspect of the site for myself. That doesn’t mean that the possibility isn’t intriguing! It is — especially since if true, it means that this site is pretty old.

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Hole in the Wall / Rings Loop Petroglyphs

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!

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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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“Borderline” Petroglyphs

This is a nice little site tucked into a quiet corner with development all around. Unfortunately it hasn’t escaped unscathed, even though it is mostly intact.

Somewhere on the Volcanic Tablelands tumbled breccia cliffs lines both sides of a little canyon. On the north side of this canyon, a little above the canyon floor, there is a rock shelter that has been augmented with a low rock wall.

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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.

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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.

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