From our base camp, we made a number of drives along 4 wheel drive roadways, portions of which were easy, some of which were “moderate”, involving driving in washes, alongside cliffs, drop offs and over boulders.
One of the these 4 wheel trails is called “Black Dragon”. We started this drive from our base camp and exited between portions of the San Rafael Reef onto I70. The Black Dragon names comes from a Native American Pictograph, which this trail goes past near the I-70 exit/entrance.
This panorama was shot from Black Dragon Viewpoint along I-70. A portion of Black Dragon trail is visible (a narrow band of light color) at the base (approximately in the center of the image) of the geological feature in the distance.
Note the chalk outlines added by someone, joining several pictographs to make them take on the appearance of a dragon. This is a defacement of the original Native American artwork.
The pictographs on this panel were done by ancients called the Barrier Canyon culture. There are petroglyphs on nearby rocks done by the Fremont culture of Native Americans.
Please note that the petroglyphs on these rocks are subtle when viewed with the naked eye. I have greatly enhanced these images to bring out the subtle artwork. So, if you visit this are, do not expect to see panels that look like those in these images.
You will also note that modern day visitors have added graffiti to these panels. Please refrain from defacing this delicate and fading artwork left to us by the ancients dwelling here long before modern day people arrived here.
I made numerous images of different portions of the panel, to bring out the details sufficiently for viewers of this post to visualize the artwork.
And again I remind readers that I’ve overlapped and zoomed in on various portions of the panel (and used extreme editing) to make the art more easy to visualize.
Thanks for following,
Ken