Tag Archives: Great Basin

Burnt Cave Pictographs

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Burnt Cave, on the shore of ancient Lake Lahontan in southern Nevada, was churned out of the hillside by the lakeshore waves around 7,000 years ago. There are several other caves in this ancient north-facing bay, but Burnt Cave is the only one with visible pictographs. It is an easy stroll from a dirt parking lot to the cave, which is a pity because some fool with a can of spray paint had happened by at some point. Some people are why other people can’t have nice things, I guess.

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“Lizard Lounge” Petroglyphs

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This was a fun little site to visit! Though smaller than many other petroglyph sites, it has some very fascinating elements.

Most of the petroglyphs at this site are similar in style to others in the vicinity, but the showcase element – the eponymous lizard – is unique. It looks much more like elements found way southwest of here, in Chumash rock art, or in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Yokuts or Tübatulabal territory.

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“Once more into the breach” Pictographs

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This site is a companion site to the “Be Hip or be Square” pictograph site. They are both in the same mountain range and both painted on a side wall of a mining adit that petered out.

This similarity makes me think that they are contemporary, but this site is more rudimentary than its companion, and the design of the pictographs at the two sites doesn’t really have much in common.

Still, this is another site that we know can at most be as old as the adit, and the adit won’t be older than 1860, a few years before the first forays into mining in this area. Continue reading →

“Midgewater Madness” Pictographs and Petroglyphs

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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!

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“Desolation of Disappointment” Petroglyphs

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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?

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“Curious Crack” Part II – Pictograph Edition!

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During the late winter we had the opportunity to return to the “Curious Crack” site. On the first trip we found petroglyphs but this time we peered closely at the nearby cliffs because there are apparently some pictographs in the area that we missed during our first visit.

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“Rattle River” Petroglyphs

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This entry isn’t named for anything specific to the petroglyphs. Instead it is named after what the trip to see it was like! This is one of the last sites we visited using our little red truck, and no other site came closer to breaking the truck than this one did.

The funny thing is that there are two ways to get to it: the way we approached ( scenic but brutal for a tiny stock truck: down a rocky canyon with a river we had to ford multiple times ) or the way we left ( nice flat graded dirt road! ) Never have I been more thankful to get back to the pavement in one piece – not even that one time we — cough — walked for miles, didn’t find anything and ended up getting stuck in deep sand for an hour ( and we had to dig out with a flat rock because we didn’t expect to get stuck and didn’t have a shovel. )

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“Cupule City” Petroglyphs

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This site is no secret – the local community knows all about it. Several dirt roads lead up to it and a stone boundary keeps away the vehicles. The ground around the site is scattered with modern debris – shotgun shells, bottles, broken glass – and the petroglyphs themselves have been vandalized by tracing over them and in one case by carving crude additions into the rock. A sign warns rock climbers away from the petroglyphs but the site is nonetheless covered in climbing talc and some of the vandalism is far enough above ground that it was likely done by a climber.

That’s a depressing introduction, isn’t it? Don’t let that scare you away – this site is still really interesting and has some amazing and unique features! For example, the number of cupules and mortars ground into the rock at this site is amazing. How much time did it take to make them all, and what meaning did they have?

The petroglyphs themselves are big and impressive despite the vandalism. Most of them have been filled in with red pigment, an uncommon feature for petroglyphs. There are a few other sites in the same area where the petroglyphs have also been carefully painted in with red pigment.

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Squaw Spring Petroglyphs

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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.

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