Three Rivers New Mexico and Painted Rock in Arizona
We actually drove the 5 hours from SD to Painted Rock first, but thought I'd better lead with my best picture. This beautiful lady looks back at you from 600 years ago at the Three Rivers Petroglyph site in New Mexico. There is a cool thing about basaltic rocks (from an upheaving volcano) and their life in the desert. They take on a "desert varnish" from weathering and provide a great canvas for someone with artistic talent and a stone or two. As you pick at the rock, it becomes a canvas. The Three Rivers art is realistic, in contrast to the San Francisco or La Rumorosa style. The spiritual journeys of the medicine men in Baja and San Diego were carried out in remote, dark, lonely spots best frequented by snakes and other vermin. The sites I am about to describe are a more social and less introspective variety. Painted Rock in particular is "more Facebook" as my better half noted.
We get to the Painted Rock turnoff by exiting Highway 8 on a road by the same name. We are a little road dazed, but manage to fill out the BLM fee envelope and get spot close to the rock mound that is the centerpiece to the the campground. We are happy to be somewhere and start unpacking the bikes and other gear we will be using. We have 10 days, so no big rush. It is a typical BLM campground with vault toilets, big trash cans and paths around the central pile of rocks with more petroglyphs (scratch the desert pavement not paint) than I have ever seen anywhere.
I am pretty stoked about the Gila River thing. It was the way the early pioneers went westward without dying in larger numbers. The Gila was the basis for the Great Southern Route to the resort city of San Diego. It had shade, potable water, and animals to sacrifice for the good of westward expansion. The next day we took off on our Rad City e-bikes to explore the Gila River and pioneer history. Unfortunately, the road to the Gila River Dam terminates about 300 yards from the earthen dam. Darn, Homeland Security wins again over any attempt to see water in the Gila River. No Trespassing! We go back toward the campground and go west by the corporate alfalfa fields, waving at the operators of $100 K tractors. At the end of the fields on the south side there are 6 javelina (Pecarry) taking it to the man by eating the highly green alfalfa a la carte. They jump around at our excitement and seem more like teddy bears than aggressive wild boar.
Javelina tracks on farm road
So, I didn't get any pictures of the peccary. I only had an iPhone, not my weapon of choice, the Panasonic sx60 with a bigger telephoto lens. Three subsequent trips to the same field yielded zip on the same subject.
So, let's talk a bit on the pictographs at Painted Rock. They date from 7,000 BC and contain the archaic style (mostly geometric patterns) to the Gila Style with human forms and anthropomorphic images with other parts added. Don Lipponi, who wrote "La Rumorosa Rock Art Along the Border" recommended an iPhone app "iDstretch", which helps to bring out faint pictograph or pictoglyph images. For me, it is kind of a poor man's Photoshop ($6).
This is a mix of the archaic and Gila styles
The thing about the Painted Rock site is that it has art from the earliest markings (7000 BC) and those that are in the Hohokam occupation from 50 BC on. The first artists were desert survivors who gathered plants and had occasional meat. At about 9000 BC, the large animals such as elephants, bison, horses etc. died out from climate change not caused by petrol dependency. Anything that looks vaguely like a human is not the archaic period, think ladders and geometric designs.
The e-bikes gave us a break from the tourists going around the big rock pile that is Painted Rock. We kept trying to catch the pesky pecarrys, but to no avail. The major volcanic mountain toward the west is Oatman Peak. We braved the washboard and uncertainty for ten miles or so out into the volcanic desert pavement and traded power levels for the lead in this endeavor. It was a pounding ride without rear suspension, but you use what you have.
At the right end of the road is camp
Beauty in the Lava
We spent 4 days at Painted Rock to a mostly deserted BLM campground. Though we were there in early December, it was the warmest part of the trip with big starry skies. The next stop was a short hop to Lordsburg, New Mexico for a shower and Subway. Got to Three Rivers Petroglyph site in late afternoon the next day and scored a BLM with electricity to run our little 1500 watt space heater. Life is good.
Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, NM near White Sands
The area where archaic pit houses and more permanent pit houses were located.
Archaic Period Pit House
As you can see the pit house style of home ownership is pretty basic. You put some twigs, mud over the top and have a small hole in the middle to let the smoke escape. The Mogollon culture in the early period were hunter gatherers who moved through the southwest as opportunity presented itself. The village site is to the east of the hills that contain the petroglyphs. They were originally a mountain people, tough and resourceful. Their art style is often quite realistic, as can be seen from the lead photograph. As farming became another source of food, the hunting and gathering still made them more independent than other groups that relied on river flooding exclusively. After crossing about 10 signed rivers with no water running (unless you count the New River, which is really disgusting), I think our infatuation with dams has reached a logical conclusion.
Many of the petroglyph have patterns within the main figure.
The mountain sheep were a prey that was highly prized.
There are over 20,000 petroglyphs at the Three Rivers site. I chose it from a book titled "Rock Art Along the Way" by Janet Farnsworth. She gives a thumbnail descriptions of sites you can visit in the southwestern states. A more formal description of current knowledge and best guesses of the experts is "The Archaeology of Ancient Arizona" by Reid and Whittlesey. If you want to get down in the weeds on pit houses and current Gila River archaeology, try:
Assorted Pictograph Pictures
