📍On the lands of the Yavapai Apache and Hohokam peoples.

Why the switch up? How about because this trip was all about seeing petroglyphs left hundreds of years ago by the people now known as the Perry Mesa Tradition? Yeah. That.

And also because it's Bureau of Land Management land. Although BLM is in the Department of the Interior like the National Park Service, BLM manages its land for multiple uses (including resource extraction). Well, that's what they used to say.

Compare the page linked from BLM's home page as "Our mission and our priorities" and you'll find none of the promised priorities. It's no surprise in this cluster of a political situation the conservatives and apathetics have put us in. (That's right. If you didn't vote to prevent returning the felon to power, this is your fault.) Nobody knows what the heck the priorities of the federal government are other than to enrich the few at the top. You can see what the priorities were by using the Wayback Machine to review the same page from January 3, 2025, before the chuckleheads in Washington bent over to accommodate MAGA.

All that to say there's no guarantee these petroglyphs will still be here in the future. Go while you still can.

If you go, make all the good decisions about being in the desert. That means bringing water, watching for snakes, and sunscreen sunscreen sunscreen. If you want to see the petroglyphs, hike down the wash from the trailhead to the junction with the (likely) dry Agua Fria and then look at the darker rocks on your left. The petroglyphs aren't hard to find if you look for them.

If you're not the brightest of bulbs (example: me), you might continue upstream on the trail that runs along the bank or in the river channel itself. This is a great way to see more of the canyon, but not petroglyphs. I wandered upstream a ways and found small pools of fetid water and huge boulders, but no petroglyphs. It wasn't until I had all but given up that I saw them on the way back to the car.

Remember these petroglyphs were made almost 800 years ago. They've lasted all that time without your help. Don't touch. Do look into the past and then think of what you can do to protect them for the future. If it's not readily apparent, start by voting out any member of Congress that isn't doing their job representing you. Yeah, sure, you could call them, but given they aren't holding the felon and friends accountable for the many ways they're breaking laws, it's unlikely even a stern talking-to is going to have much of an effect. Show them your power at the ballot box.