Petroglyphs in the Valley of Fire
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
Dear Henry,
Within the canyons of Valley of Fire State Park, carved into sandstone that seems to glow from within, are the petroglyphs.
They were the main reason I wanted to come here.
Long before Nevada became Nevada, this land was home to several Native peoples, most notably the Ancestral Puebloans (often called the Anasazi) and later the Southern Paiute. Over thousands of years, they carved images into the rock, animals, figures, patterns, and symbols, leaving behind records that have endured far longer than paper ever could.
The Valley of Fire itself feels ancient. The park’s vivid red formations were created over 150 million years ago from shifting sand dunes that hardened into sandstone, later pushed upward and exposed by erosion. When humans arrived, they found not a blank landscape, but one already shaped by time, water, and heat.
The petroglyphs stop you in your tracks.
They are deliberate. Repeated. Placed carefully along travel routes and near water sources. Standing there, I couldn’t help thinking about something I had read in Guns, Germs, and Steel, the idea that many Native cultures in what is now the United States lacked a written language.
But what, exactly, counts as writing?
Are these not symbols meant to convey meaning? Are they not stories, records, or markers of identity and memory? Alongside hide paintings, oral traditions, and carved stone, these images suggest systems of communication that don’t neatly fit into a narrow, alphabet-based definition.
Perhaps the issue isn’t that these cultures lacked writing.
Perhaps it’s that we’ve too often failed to recognize writing when it doesn’t look like our own.
The Valley of Fire was designated Nevada’s first state park in 1935, preserving not only its dramatic geology, but also these fragile records of human presence. Walking among the petroglyphs, you feel the responsibility of that preservation, the awareness that these marks have survived drought, migration, colonization, and time itself.
They don’t need translation to matter.
They are proof that people were here. That they observed, remembered, and left messages behind—whether or not we yet understand how to read them fully.
And yes, Henry, I still wonder what Jared Diamond would say about that.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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