Now here’s a site that was hard to find! I’m not even sure how many trips we made before we found it.
This site is kind of in the middle of nowhere so you have to commit a good chunk of time just to hoof it to the general area, never mind start searching. After we had a couple of unsuccessful attempts at finding it I started analyzing my very vague research more thoroughly. As I found more clues I steadily narrowed down its location until finally I was sure I had it this time! So we set out again to find it. This was going to be the time. It was late afternoon and we were kind of done for the day already but I had the urge to be out in the desert despite my leaden legs, so off we went.
One boulder is very like another … we spent a ton of time sidling up to boulders only to find they had no good overhangs, let alone pictographs. Here, finally, is a look at the famous Queen Mountain Pictograph Boulder. Most of the pictographs are out of sight behind the lip of the overhang, or hard to make out in this picture, but note how the pigment is applied on the darker nodules in the overhang. Those nodules are some sort of hard ingenious rock embedded in the boulder. I’m not a geologist so I don’t know how these form or even what they’re made of! Also note the little perch in the rough center of the picture, where the white splotches are. Lots of bird poop right there.
The Queen Mountain valley is a pretty and pleasant part of Joshua Tree National Park, which is just as well given how much time we’ve spent bashing around it!
We walked past boulders we recognized from previous visits, and soon reached the area I wanted to search this time.
It was like an infinite loop. Approach boulder. Circle boulder. Inspect boulder. Discover boulder is just the way nature made it. Approach new boulder and start it all over again.
In the end we had to admit defeat once again. We wearily trudged back to the vehicle in the deepening dusk.
After that visit I made up my mind to let the search be … that is, unless a bright neon arrow happened to appear right over the boulder to lead me to it!
I knew from other trip reports that the site is interesting but not particularly large and so the amount of effort we’ve put into it to date seemed way out of proportion with what we would see.
Well, all that changed again over the summer solstice, because I can’t leave well enough alone, and because I finally looked at enough resources that I was pretty dang sure I knew which boulder it was, thanks to a lot of Google Earth terrain scanning. And this time I’m happy to report that we found it!
Let’s duck right under the overhang and take a look at the main panel. For reference, the arrow you could see in the center of the previous photo is now visible top left. The various white streaks in this picture are probably bird poop. It is definitely bird poop in the lower left ( that is the little ledge I pointed out in the previous picture ) and on the black nodule in the lower center. It is probably bird poop to the lower right of the nodule, too.
Some DStretch. Note that my wide-angle lens flattens the picture a lot. That is a good-sized concave overhang we’re peering into. There are two arrows in this picture – the obvious arrow in the upper left and a smaller one in the lower center right. The black nodule in the center right of the picture might also have a small arrow on it. These don’t seem to point to anything though. The pigment splotches below “bird poop ledge” are indistinct. The black nodule has seven red lines drawn on it. There is a bisected circle / oval symbol above the five tally marks in the right center. Those tally marks are interesting – they’re not straight lines. We’ll look at them in more detail in a little bit. Finally, there is a nice little sun symbol in the upper right. That symbol is drawn on a darker part of the rock too, but in this case it is a small recess, not a protruding nodule.
The summer solstice weekend was supposed to be brutally hot: record-breaking heat in fact. What we were doing out in the desert I wouldn’t know ( well, actually … stay tuned for that one. Eventually I will share that story! ) but there we were, posting up at a very familiar trailhead in the late afternoon to head into the backcountry one more time.
The day was unexpectedly overcast, which when combined with the Queen Valley’s lofty altitude turned impossible heat into tolerable heat. As we got out of the vehicle a few stray raindrops even blew in from the clouds overhead. What a surprise!
We strode off across the valley, then climbed into a boulder field. I started recognizing boulders from our last visit. Yup, seen that one, seen that one too … oh hey, here’s that one I was sure was going to be it, that turned out to not be it … hmmm, we’re now only about 15 yards shy of the target I punched into the GPS.
What! – we got within fifteen yards of it last time and didn’t find it? Oh man!
Sure enough, we were basically right next to the boulder on our last visit, but we didn’t see it!
This may just be me, but: I was surprised by the size of the elements when I finally found this site! I thought they were much smaller. In this case, I included my hand, hovering about a foot away from the rock, as reference. Disclaimer: my hands are really small so scale may now be exaggerated. This close-up should also remove any doubt about whether the white streaks are bird poop or not!
So finally, after one last scramble, I stood in front of my quarry. The boulder was larger than I thought it would be, and the pictographs were very interesting – and also larger than I thought they would be.
I got used to smallish pictograph designs back when I first started looking for them, and I’m still surprised by the scale of some of the Serrano pictographs.
This site is rather curious. Joshua Tree National Park has a dense concentration of pictographs, and you’ll often find more close by where you’ve found some. This site, however, seems to stand alone. There is no other site around for an appreciable distance. ( I should know – we’ve looked at every dang rock in this valley before we found this one! )
Under some of the nearby boulders there are clues that the region wasn’t unfrequented in years past: stacked rocks hinting at a bivouac or perhaps an olla nest, and there are some grinding slicks and stones nearby … but no other pictographs. At all.
Here: another element with my hand for scale. That nodule is – I don’t know – half a foot across? Well, I just measured my hand from the base of the palm to the tip of the middle finger ( for science! ) annnnnd … just about seven inches! So that nodule is about seven inches across, too. ( Yes, I have itty bitty hands. )
In a way that is not surprising: there are no springs close by, and the rock formations in this region of the Park doesn’t lend themselves as readily to holding seasonal tanks as other parts of it do. There was no compelling reason to settle here or spend much time here, not when there were other more attractive spots nearby.
Some of the pictograph elements at this site are unlike any found at nearby sites – the arrows in particular springs to mind.
There are many sites in Joshua Tree National Park that share the same sort of imagery: bisected circles connected with lines, rakes, diamonds, bisected circles by themselves … none of those sites have arrow elements, which are very rare to non-existent in pictographs to my knowledge.
I wonder whether this site is an anomaly because it is historic, or otherwise disconnected from the region’s past. I have no way of knowing, of course.
This is another site that is becoming more well-known as time passes. I’m delighted that it is still as pristine as it was when photos of it first started surfacing.
If you visit, respect and enjoy it. Places like these are precious and we are all responsible for their safekeeping. Don’t touch the pictographs – your hands are full of contaminants ( even natural skin oils! ) that can react poorly with the pigment. Leave a bit of mystery and respect behind – just look, and take your photos but nothing else.
A circle, drawn on one of the protruding nodules.
Another painted nodule. This one is also sort of cross-shaped, but the paint was applied more thickly over the nodule, resulting in an indistinct shape.
I love these close-up shots – they really give you an idea of the coarse texture of the granite and the thinness of the pigment. This symbol is cross-shaped. You can also see traces of pigment past the two shorter cross bars. I imagine that the pigment was more vivid when it was first applied, but because the paint was thin when first applied, the porous nodule drew some of it into the rock as it dried, resulting in this thin coat of pigment showing the rock texture underneath.
A really close look at the burst element. It has six regularly spaced tines and a negative space center. The pigment was quite thin and wet when it was drawn. A lot of pigment was absorbed by the porous surface below so that the texture of the rock is clearly visible underneath the element.
This arrow does draw the eye, because it is a shape our culture is familiar with. Unlike some of the symbols painted on the nodules it is obvious that this shape was painted with a much drier, thicker pigment, since it only left pigment on the raised parts of the coarse granite, as opposed to filling in the “valleys” in the textured rock as would have happened with a wet medium.
Let’s take in a more zoomed-in look at that main panel. Do you see how the second set of tally marks, in the right-center, is made up of individual segments? There is also a second grouping of five tally marks, center lower left. It is harder to tell whether those lines are continuous or not. Let’s ask DStretch if we’re missing something.
Well … the right hand set of five lines is clearly split into sections, three or four per line, but I’m not sure about the left hand set. Some of the lines appear to be in segments, while others appear to be continuous.
Here is another overview shot where you get an idea of the texture of the hollow, unlike the overview shot that flattened everything. You can get a sense of the little ledges that birds found great for sitting on … and more.
I hoped you enjoyed visiting this site with me! I had fun finding it, though it also tried my patience.