Well, geez, here we are in the huge desolate desert and we come upon a bunch of rocks with graffiti on them. You will have to forgive me for not taking pictures of the graffiti by Tom or Tony in 1909 or 1951 or 1969. I also skipped pictures of rocks that had had the ancient pictographs chipped off.
Because the Gila River flowed through this area and people needed to be near water as they traveled the desert, natives lived here and settlers and wagon trains followed the river toward California.
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Some pretty impressive folks traveled through here too:
All of these people had the chance to mark the rocks.
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Some pretty impressive folks traveled through here too:
- In 1775, De Anza on his way to settle San Francisco with 240 individuals.
- In 1847, the Mormon Battalion of 500 from Council Bluffs, Iowa to San Diego. Through the Arizona territory their guide was adventurer and mountain man Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, who as an infant had traveled with his mother Sacagawea across the continent with the Lewis and Clark Expedition (small world).
- From 1857-1861, the Butterfield Overland Stage and Mail Route taking 23 days from St Louis to San Francisco.
All of these people had the chance to mark the rocks.
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Our Bureau of Land Management is working at keeping the historic pictographs on Painted Rock from being ruined. We enjoyed our trek. Below are our interpretations of the pictographs.
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| Looks like deer or goats, snakes, and turtles |
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| Everybody was busy leaving notes |
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| This is the symbol for this park - maybe migration maybe near water? |
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| Not sure what they are trying to portray here I think somebody got bit by a lizard and another one was blowing a bubble??? |
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| The geometric designs are supposedly from early A.D. |
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| This guy was keeping an eye on the goings on He's real - not a pictograph |
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| Spring is coming - a few tiny blossoms are poking up |
