Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons

For 2001 historic district that included the canyons, see Coso Rock Art District.

Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons
Archaic abstract curvilinear-style petroglyphs by Coso People
Nearest cityChina Lake, California
AreaCoso Rock Art District
ArtistsCoso People
NRHP reference No.66000209[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHPOctober 15, 1966[1]
Designated NHLJuly 19, 1964[2]

Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons are two principal landforms within which are found major accumulations of Paleo-Indian and/or Native American Petroglyphs, or rock art, by the Coso People located in the Coso Range Mountains of the northern Mojave Desert, and now within the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, near the towns of China Lake and Ridgecrest, California.[3] Little Petroglyph Canyon contains 20,000 documented images, which surpasses in number for most other collections. Additionally, the archeological resources are remarkably undisturbed.

  1. ^ a b "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference nhlsum was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Caroline Arnold and Richard Hewett. 1996. Stories in stone: rock art pictures by early Americans, 48 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 0-395-72092-3, ISBN 978-0-395-72092-9