Trail to the Past

Gila National Forest

Click for map.

The little trail in Lower Scorpion Campground claims it will take you over seven hundred years into the past in a short quarter of a mile. It actually has two particularly short trails, a flat one that was once paved off to some pictographs and a work area, and a dirt one up the canyon to a small dwelling. The pictographs get the sunlight in the afternoon and the dwelling is situated to catch morning sun and afternoon shade.

The sign and trail to start one off "to the past".

I actually walked the trail a few times, usually first to the painting then to the dwelling. Timmy even walked it a couple times, faithfully following even without a leash. (I don't really trust him to stick around in case of animals, so he gets a leash on a real hike. If the trail were any longer, he would have gotten uncomfortable with the distance from his home base and turned around anyway.) He seemed to like the work area best. There are more plants in that area to sniff about. One morning, I went up to the dwelling first to catch it in the light.

The canyon and trail really are both quite tiny.

The morning sun is already getting high enough to shade, but since this morning was a touch below freezing that initial sun would probably have been welcome.

This is called two rooms, but if there was entry to the last walled off area it was three rooms. There is usable space in the last, but they are progressively shorter.

The entire rock overhang is sooty, though some of that could be more modern in origin.

The other trail to the painting is even shorter. The painting is mostly on a single piece of cliff, but it is everywhere there. The work area is a rock behind it and my eye is not sharp enough to pick up the "smoothed" areas on it that might have been caused by sharpening tools. Or something else.

Approaching the rock face where the painting is found.

Interpretive signs help point out some of what is known or speculated.

Some of the painting is quite dark. It does seem to be more visible in the shade.

Some painting that is higher up.

The longer I look, the more painting I see. There is actually some on the alcove just before the obvious space with the sign and a couple patches left up by the dwelling. I got some more pictures of the dwelling in the afternoon when the light is more even.

The entry to the dwelling is held up by wood, but has been reinforced to reduce the danger of it collapsing.

There is a small hole purposely made at the upstream side of the dwelling and this larger one at the downstream side. Water could have been diverted in for cooling or maybe this is a doggie door?

Some of the little painting near the dwelling.

It may be short, but it is quite an interesting little spot to look around. Really, it is too short to pass up.




©2019 Valerie Norton
Written 9 Jun 2019