Tucked away in the juniper-dotted canyons of the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in northwestern Arizona next to Mount Trumbull lies one of the region's most extensive collections of rock art - the Nampaweap Petroglyphs. Scattered across dark basalt boulders are thousands of petroglyphs - not the handful you might expect, but an entire half-mile gallery of ancient rock art that represents one of the largest petroglyph sites on the Arizona Strip.
The name means "foot canyon" in Paiute, describing this natural corridor that connected the Colorado River to the ponderosa pine resources of Mount Trumbull. Locals call this "Billy Goat Canyon" because bighorn sheep images dominate the volcanic walls, pecked into desert varnish by hands that worked these stones between 10,000 and 1,500 years ago. What makes this place remarkable isn't just the quantity of rock art, but its condition - virtually untouched, with no glass barriers or fences keeping you from getting close enough to see the hammer stone marks.
Petroglyphs
Prehistory
The Southern Paiute believe their Creator placed them on these lands, where they have lived in respectful balance since time immemorial. Religious specialists from Ancestral Puebloan, Paiute, and Archaic cultures made petroglyphs in places full of power across millennia, documenting events, histories, family stories, and perhaps their own vision quests at Nampaweap. The artists struck basalt with hammer stones, pecking away the dark desert varnish to reveal lighter stone beneath, creating hundreds of geometric designs, spirals, handprints, anthropomorphic figures, and zoomorphic forms.
The canvas for this ancient art formed through volcanism on the Uinkaret Plateau. Beginning 150,000 years ago, seeping eruptions covered the ground with multiple thin beds of basalt. Slow cooling caused fractures that wind, water, and ice exploited, eventually causing huge chunks to fall from the cliff faces. A pottery sherd embedded in basalt from the nearby Little Springs Eruption suggests that recent volcanic activity occurred around 1050 CE, indicating people witnessed and interacted with these geological processes firsthand.
