Site Report No. 12: Legend Rock, WY

I always had a “thing” for Wyoming.  Maybe it’s the bucking bronco on the license plate.  Maybe it’s the buffalo.  Or maybe it’s my idea of the American West.  As a teenager, I wrote that I would someday live in Wyoming.  Maybe I will because my imagined version of the place squared with reality.  It is covered with magnificent mountains, ranges, and high plains. 

We stay in Thermopolis (Greek for hot city) in Central Wyoming.  We are here to visit some of the oldest examples of prehistoric rock art.  Carved over a period of a thousand years in Big Horn Basin, next to Cottonwood Creek, on the red sandstone cliffs are some 300 petroglyphs of people and animals:  Legend Rock.  But before we drive 30 miles out of town to see the site, we take a soak in the hot mineral springs that Thermopolis is known for.  Not to be missed.  Then at the State Bath House we pick up a key to locked gate to Legend Rock.  The woman behind the desk tells us to look out for rattlesnakes and lock the gate behind us after we enter.  Arriving at the deep red, purple mountains we walk along a narrow path filled with sagebrush and boulders that look like perfect homes for snakes.  A chipmunk nimbly scales the cliff face. 

The wall is filled for 800 yards with detailed, graphic etchings of humans, birds, rabbits, and elk.  They were carved and pecked and look like shadow shapes or silhouettes.  Tall, anthromorphic figures like the one seen in the photo above with the “U” shape head date to about 2,000 years ago.  The oldest images (10,000 years ago) at the site are carvings of an antelope, human figure, and adult hand.  The handprint was pecked into the rock.  What do they mean?  Some reasons might be religious, documentation of events, a calendar or inventory, or maybe the artist just wanted to draw.  The Shoshone people or their predecessors may have made the images.  They believe that humans did not make the petroglyphs but the spirits they embody did.  It was a mysterious and deeply profound site.

Later that day, we drove to Devils Tower to watch the sunset and starry night.  (Remember the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1978)?  And check out John’s a-mazing photo.  We meet some climbers who describe the top of the tower being flat and grassy.  There are also chipmunks and snakes living there.  I’ve seen the chipmunks climb but how did the snakes get up there?  As night falls, we watch the headlamps of climbers descending the tower.