Coso Rock Art District
NAWS China Lake, Kern / Inyo counties, California, United States
Canyons of volcanic rock inside a California naval station carrying thousands of petroglyphs, from the famous bighorn sheep to anthropomorphs, currently closed to tours.
In the canyons of the Coso Range, inside the boundaries of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, runs one of the great rock art landscapes of the Americas: thousands of petroglyphs pecked into dark volcanic canyon walls, with images the Maturango Museum dates from before 13,000 years ago to recent centuries. The famous motif is the desert bighorn sheep, drawn at large scale and in number, and the research literature reads the sheep imagery in connection with hunting magic and shamanic practice; the museum describes the district as the largest known concentration of petroglyphs in the Western Hemisphere, a claim properly attributed to its keeper.
The district lies in and near Paiute and Shoshone country, and the art is treated as ancestral presence by the tribes associated with the area. Access has always been controlled, on Navy escort with background checks, and currently tours are suspended entirely: the Navy is not allowing petroglyph tours, per the museum's page, with no date announced. The public window into the district right now is the museum itself in Ridgecrest.
Visiting
Closed: Maturango Museum states that NAWS China Lake is not currently allowing petroglyph tours and will post any resumption on its events page; the museum (100 E Las Flores Ave, Ridgecrest) remains open daily except Monday with exhibits and programs.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coso_petroglyphs_%281%29.JPG), public domain.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories