Monday, December 3, 2012

Little Petroglyph Canyon

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I was fortunate enough to be invited to go tour Little Petroglyph Canyon (AKA Renegade Canyon) this last weekend. Little Petroglyph Canyon has the largest known concentration of petroglyphs in the western hemisphere and is located on the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Base. You can only visit this site with Navy approved guides and tour dates are limited to certain times of the year. You can find out more information about touring the site from the Maturango Museum website.

Recommended Reading about the Coso Range Petroglyphs

This was an amazing site with probably thousands of petroglyphs. Probably one of the most amazing parts of the petroglyphs is the obvious difference in dates of all the petroglyphs. You can clearly see many that have patina dating back thousands of years and some that apear to be probably only a few hundred years. Some dating techniques recently used suggest some of the petroglyphs are 14,000-16,000 years old!

In the 3-1/2 - 4 hours we spent in the canyon I took almost 1,000 photos, there were petroglyphs everywhere! I trimmed down the collection to mostly all unique photos and you can view them all here Little Petroglyph Canyon Photos

Here are a few of my favorites

Really,really old petroglyphs
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I call this guy "Ziggy"
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Family Petroglyphs
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Medicine Man
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The Hunter
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Bighorn Sheep Kill
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