A few years ago, a few friends and I went out to search for some rock art sites in a canyon in Death Valley. It was still pretty early in the season, so it wasn’t hot yet.
We were hunting for some petroglyph and pictograph sites in the canyon. I know there are more than half a dozen sites scattered throughout the canyon, but I haven’t had the time to hike to them all yet. For this trip, we went looking for one of the easier ones to find.
This is one of the many shelters found by early archaeologist Alice Hunt, along with her husband Charles Hunt, she surveyed much of the valley and published a paper on her work. This shelter is one of the few she found that had pictographs still inside of it. The pictographs are mainly human figures and bighorn sheep. It is possible these were made by the Western Shoshone, Southern Paiute, Panamint or Kawaiisu people.
A little way beyond the pictograph shelter, we came across another rock shelter. This one only had a low rock wall and a single metate.
If you come across either of these sites while wandering the great vastness of Death Valley, please remember that these places are protected by law. Do not disturb anything. Take only photos, leave only footprints.