Crystal Wash Petroglyphs

Caliente Field Office BLM

(map link)

I picked up three brochures for petroglyph sites at the Caliente Field Office including the one for Crystal Wash. Between the rough location of #98 Crystal Wash Petroglyphs on the Ely District Recreation Opportunity Guide (on the wrong side of the highway) and the description in the brochure, which referred to mile markers that have almost entirely vanished from the highway, I guessed my starting location was a little further down an unnamed road than geocache GC14GG1: I'd Go a Mile for a Smile-Elephant Poop. It is another one saying you could take your mamma's Jetta down the road, and this road is smooth. The sagebrush down the middle still provided some very audible bumping and the faint wash near the start could get worse over time. Still, I got to the end and found a small dirt parking area and a register. (Infrastructure! Confirmation of correct location!) The register seemed to think one could expect to find brochures in the box with it, but there were none when I got there. (There was one when I left. While Ely District seems bad about getting these brochures or site information online, you can download it here from the Nevada Rock Art Foundation, the agency that actually produced it, at least if your signal doesn't say "emergency only" like mine did. There is some site information too. They also have electronic versions of an introduction to anthropology in the Great Basin and their big book of rock art in Lincoln County, Nevada.)

A register with a faint trail past it out in the middle of nowhere. Confirmation of making it to the right location.

So I got to puzzling out the information on the brochure. The first stop isn't so hard to find. It's very close to the register along a faint trail to where a lone rock sits in this vast plain.

The first petroglyphs on a lone rock. Do you see them?

There they are, pecked into the tuff.

No wonder I didn't see any the day before. Those are rough and hard to spot from more than about 20 feet off. From the first stop, the trail goes into the wash past an antiquities notification. It follows this downstream. I could not really see any trail, but there were footprints. Anyway, one does not need trail to follow a wash.

Just head for the wash beside the slapstick sign to the right and head downhill to the area of the other sites, off over there.

Shallow wash for now, but it won't stay that way.

The second stop is a short way to the left of the wash. There are arrow markers in the wash to point the way out of it sometimes. There are a few stacked cairns high on rocks. I found enough clues to arrive at the second and third markers, but there's not really a trail.

The metal marker for the second site. Among the carvings are abstract lines and distinct characters and animals on the large rock to the right.

A closer look at the lines and characters.

Lots of sheep.

The careful observer will also find slab milling stones here as it was a work area for handling foodstuffs.

Site 3 has some more sheep. Bighorn sheep are very popular throughout the ages.

One must take care looking around the site. Petroglyphs could be and milling stones certainly are in places where feet might land. Bumping rocks and particularly poking at them with fingers could hasten weathering. The areas aren't marked very specifically and more exists than is marked. I looked and did not touch a while and returned to the wash to try to spot the next area.

A small cairn and another figure mark the next cluster of petroglyphs and more.

I followed the markers. They are up on the rocks near the last of the graveled plain as the wash proceeds downhill.

At the edge of the change from gravelly plain to boulder field.

All the separate rocks here have their markings.

For me, a chaotic jumble. Generally examples of the Basin and Range style that dominates this area.

The rocks oxidize slowly to dark where exposed, so old figures become dark and here newer, lighter, ones have been placed over them.

More sheep at the next marker! The one at the bottom left is a little different.

Several mortars in the bedrock.

The brochure states that markers 6 and 7 are the "most likely places where traditional dwellings or wickiups were erected". It also says that bands would separate into smaller groups of a family or two for summer food gathering and then come together into larger gatherings for winter. There would likely have been more than just a couple dwellings since this was a wintering area.

This sheltered spot by marker 6 has carvings all along it, many where a foolish step might land. Be careful!

Finding my way from marker 6 to marker 7 would prove difficult. The rough dotted line drawn on a satellite picture didn't seem to help at all for finding landmarks to judge by. The only landmarks were the main wash and markers to try to understand exactly what the scale bar means.

It is good to have a moment to enjoy the scenery of weathered rock, still at the edge of gravel plain and boulder jumble.

Far from the main wash, it still seems like wash.

I decided I had gone too far and eventually found my way to a number 9.

A different look with a little elevation, across the plain to the South Pahroc Range.

A little arrow suggests the way, but it is a little more advanced along the path than where I am trying to find.

Another well carved rock including the "floor" area.

And with many layers of different ages, but the line of figures make it quite attractive. These are part of the few "Pahranagat style anthropomorphs".

More milling was done under this huge overhang.

With that, I had found all the markers for the upper area of Crystal Wash I. Next was simply to follow the wash down to Crystal Wash II. Even this did not prove to be easy. I hadn't noticed that when I followed the smoother area toward marker 4, the main wash had actually gone south through a line of rocks embedded in the ground. They created a line and I believed it, I suppose. It took a couple tries to find a way down.

Not this way, not for a simple trail.

Back with footprints on trail, the way above.

And the way below.

Even once among the rocks, there are not particularly high walls to the wash.

The first marked site in the lower Crystal Wash area is actually #4. The brochure takes a more encompassing approach to writing about these sites, tending to talk about culture and particular aspects of life, then mention which markers illustrate the point rather than the more traditional number and explaination approach. The numbers are a little jumbled and it doesn't matter. These lower ones are on bighorn sheep instead of humanoids.

Site 4 (bighorn) is a lone rock in the wash.

The rock at site 4 has wrap around designs. The spot feels to be a bit of a crossroads as another bit of wash comes to join the main branch. Does the art serve to inform about the choice presented? It is rather abstract and much of the meanings lost to history. This place had changing people and the people have changed through the centuries and the art goes back a long long time.

A closer look at the boulder which has a pleasing meandering line on the joined wash side and symbols where it splits.

Feeling so much like a crossroads, I was inspired to wander up the other wash a short way. I wasn't the only one as there were footprints in it from the previous party, too.

A return to the rock from another approach.

Then on I went, with an eye out for the next site. Two of the markers for the lower site have gone missing.

Passing by more rock art, both on the vertical and the slant to the left. This is only a portion of the art at marked site 3.

I continued on, finding site 1. It stands out again as if another crossroads, but a junction is not so obvious. It is another with wrap around patterns, mostly a single line.

The boulder at site 1, with a line and a stick figure among other symbols, out standing in its field.

Another angle on that same boulder.

I retreated a little to locate site 2.

Site 2 with its marker. There's a long looping line near the bottom.

Then I headed further down the wash pondering one arrow and generally not seeing where I should be going. I went way too far, wandered a little way down the wrong side channel. I really wanted to see site 5 and 6. It says 6 has a coyote figure! I puzzled over the scale of things, discovered that the arrows do not twist easily even if one seems to be twisted, and finally got into the correct wash branch, but was still not quite in the right place to see these low markers.

Time to take in the environment.

I spotted some bighorn sheep.

And they spotted me. Mama (left) and some youngsters.

Looking at the real sheep, I finally spotted the little metal sheep 6 I was looking for. It marks a large and multilayered panel and I despaired of finding the coyote. How long must those studying these spend picking out the separate pieces in order to see it all?

It's complicated. The long stick figures that are uncommon in other sites particularly stand out at this level of examination. There's more to the sides.

The very very long, longest of them all, stick figure at the right side.

Other stick figures and a bighorn sheep. Perhaps that's the coyote toward the upper right?

Once I knew where site 6 was, site 5 was easy to find. It's another special one both for the natural feature and it has the only paint known in the site.

The boulder "hollowed out by the wind" at site 5, but one has to wonder if this unique feature was helped out with human hands.

A hole where everything splits...

Paint covered the top once, according to the brochure, so any patterns you see are from weathering.

Mom and kids were going up first. Now the papa.

That interpretive trail was certainly harder than expected, but I found it all. I would not have been able to find the route and the marked spots without the brochure. I went back to the wash just a little further down and set off toward the geocache that had sort of helped me find the start. Going cross country back to the road was certainly not straightforward.

Easy travel for a little bit in a wide wash not quite heading in the right direction.

A desert cottontail freezes to avoid notice.

High on the left and a channel to the right.

Someone had piled a large cairn at one spot, so I went over to look. It didn't lead to trail or anything. Just a cairn. So I went back to making my own way.

Back to the graveled flats.

I found and signed the geocache. The former logs indicate that about 3 out of 87 also stopped by to see more than the rock formations next to it. One over 10 years ago thinks maybe there will be a sign soon. Perhaps not, but the gate they mention is improved. I followed the road back to the parking.

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While I'm willing to report on those things that are being made available and known to the public, particularly when they come with literature about the site, I'm not really adding to it. I did find one unmarked panel along the way for the joy of discovery. I present it here, detached from position and time. Was it even along the path presented? I leave it to others to find as well.

Small and old and dark and in playing with the colors to bring it out, more that is even older seems to appear.

*photo album*




©2023,2024 Valerie Norton
Written 25 Jan 2024