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Parson's Ranch Petroglyphs

Parson's Ranch Petroglyphs

A friend invited me to visit these modern petroglyphs over a decade ago. He didn't know what to make of them and neither do I. They are clearly modern but why are they here? What do they mean? Why did someone bother to carve them? The symbols are

Cary's Castle North Petroglyphs

Cary's Castle North Petroglyphs

In 2016, on an adventure north of Cary's Castle (one of many), I stumbled upon these petroglyphs hidden among the granite boulders of the Eagle Mountains. The abstract designs appear to be Desert Archaic in style, likely created by indigenous peoples who traveled these washes for thousands of

Mammoth Consolidated Mine

Mammoth Consolidated Mine

Mammoth Lakes is one of the Eastern Sierra's most popular recreation destinations, prized for its excellent skiing in the winter, ample hiking opportunities in the summer, and world-class scenery. Few visitors today realize that the town's roots trace back to a late-1800s gold mining

Mexican-American Labor Camp, Death Valley Railroad

Mexican-American Labor Camp, Death Valley Railroad

I came upon this site in a rather odd way: a video from an ultralight pilot flying over DV that came up on my YouTube feed last year. He passed over some odd looking ruins somewhere in the eastern part of the park that I glimpsed on the background. After

Mother Wood's Saloon, Death Valley

Mother Wood's Saloon, Death Valley

One of the things that I love most about a place like Death Valley is that you never know what you might discover literally anywhere. From the (at least) 12,000 year history of known & unknown Native American tribes that have called this place home to the ephemeral boom-

Burham Canyon Pictographs

Burham Canyon Pictographs

Two things make Burham Canyon remarkable: the vibrant pictographs painted in red, white, black, orange, and traces of blue, and the fact that women from three different tribes traveled here specifically for childbirth. The Kitanemuk considered it home territory, but Kawaiisu women came from the northeast and Tataviam from the

Chemung Mine

Chemung Mine

The Chemung Mine tells two stories, and neither one ends well. The first is about phenomenally rich gold ore that someone discovered in 1909 – ore so valuable it ran "several hundred dollars per ton" in an era when that meant real money. The second story is about a