petroglyph

Our guides promise early on that we will see petroglyphs, pictographs and a massive natural dome that inspires as much awe as the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Vandals struck the petroglyphs in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Last month’s incident is at least the 50th time someone has vandalized a petroglyph in Big Bend National Park since 2015, and it’s the latest in a string of high-profile defacements that have occurred on public lands throughout the United States.

A few weeks before that, a different panel had been bolted by a climber who mistook petroglyphs for graffiti.

A few miles up the road from Crescent Junction, petroglyphs from almost 2,000 years ago etch the cliffs near the roofless buildings of a tiny mining town abandoned in the middle of the last century.

The large figure on the right reminds us of the human form of the petroglyph at Nanaimo.