Newspaper Rock Petroglyphs

Roughly six hundred and fifty images cover the sandstone below this overlook, pecked into the desert varnish by Ancestral Puebloan people across many centuries, some of them nearly two thousand years old. Spirals, animals, human figures, and shapes whose meanings stayed with their makers crowd the rock face. You view it from a platform above rather than walking down, which feels right; this was never a signboard meant for us to read. It records generations who farmed and traveled the Puerco valley, and the sheer density alone tells you how long they were here.

What the plaque says

Archeological District. This property has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior, 1976.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petrified Forest National Park — 5.2 mi
  Two hundred million years turned to stone — and a Route 66 ghost
• Holbrook — 21 mi
  A Santa Fe railroad town once too tough for women and churches, now the seat of Navajo County, gateway to the Petrified Forest, and home to the concrete teepees of the Wigwam Motel.

More markers nearby

• Summer Solstice Marker — 0.9 mi
• Pioneers of Paleontology — 1.7 mi
• Agate Bridge — 4.8 mi
• The Painted Desert — 7.0 mi