Wednesday, January 12, 2011
We finally got to the petroglyphs.
Frying Pan Canyon
The Frying Pan Canyon rock art site looks like it has not been long abandoned, though centuries must have passed since the petroglyphs there were pecked into the huge boulders. There are several rock shelters with fire-blackened ceilings and many deep grinding pits in altar-like arrays. The petroglyphs, thickly clustered around the shelters, include both representational and abstract designs with a large number of portrayals of human and animal foot prints.
The petroglyphs date between 600 and 1200 AD. The Butterfield trail was open 6 years, just before the Civil War. It was protected by Fort Cummings, (3 miles away) over Palmer Pass and passing by Massacre Peak. How long ago was AD? It takes simple arithmetic 2011 - 600 = 1411 years ago. Can you believe it? We were standing in the
same place 1411 years later? How much history do we pass by everyday?