Hiking and exploring backcountry locations of the Western United States.
I recently followed an ancient Native American trail out to a water tank and petroglyph site. What got my attention to this site was the report of historical inscriptions and the fact that it is way off of other Native American trails I knew about.
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After a long hike across empty sand flats and through desolate canyons, we found a small alcove with a few Fremont figures and a six color rainbow pictograph on the back wall. I’ve never seen anything like it.
On a late autumn day in 1837, a fur trapper from Santa Fe, Antoine Robidoux, stopped along a narrow canyon in the Territorio de Alta California (what is
Brownie Sam and Emmett Rosse, two Shoshone cowboys, stopped alongside this huge volcanic boulder in late October of 1932. It is a place where their ancestors had camped many times. The ancients had carved numerous symbols on this rock, they decided they would too. They stood on the backs of their horses and added their names to the record above the petroglyphs below.
The Jayhawkers are famous for their harrowing journey through the unexplored lands of Death Valley in 1849 on their way to reach the fabled gold fields of California’s Mother Lode. They made it, but only after burning their wagons and ditching some of their possessions. They are likely the first white people to set foot in the vast alkali valley and are credited for giving Death Valley its name.
