Ancient Native Americans left behind a great amount of their architecture and culture, and today, many people have a passion for seeing it and learning about it.
The arid climate of the Southwest has been great for preserving art and artifacts in excellent condition, so it’s no surprise that this region seems to have the greatest concentration of sites.
However, you can find ancient petroglyphs (carvings) and pictographs (paintings) in other areas as well. In this article, we’ll highlight some of the best of them.
Petroglyph Beach State Historic Park, Alaska
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Scattered about the beach here in southeastern Alaska are boulders with about 40 petroglyphs carved into them. The Tlingot people made them, and the petroglyphs are thousands of years old.
Dighton Rock State Park, Massachusetts
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Until 1963, the 40-ton boulder with petroglyphs etched into them was in the Taunton River close to the Atlantic Ocean. It’s now in a museum at the state park. No one knows what the symbols mean, but there are many theories, including one that the petroglyphs date back to Biblical times!
Pictograph State Park, Montana
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Located near Billings, this state park has more than 1,000 pictographs that are around 2,000 years old. Weather has made some of them hard to see, but many others are in excellent condition. About 30,000 artifacts have been recovered here as well.
Jeffers Petroglyphs, Minnesota
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You’ll need to go on a guided tour to view the rock art here. There are about 5,000 petroglyphs here, and scientists estimate them as being approximately 7,000 years old. These petroglyphs were “old” before the Egyptian pyramids were ever built!
Roche-a-Cri State Park, Wisconsin
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While you’re in Minnesota to check out petroglyphs, you should plan to visit neighboring Wisconsin. At Roche-a-Cri, “screaming rock” in French, you’ll find a huge rock outcrop with both petroglyphs and pictographs.
Sanilac Petroglyphs Historic State Park, Michigan
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Extend your tour of the Great Lakes states by visiting this site near Cass City. This park has Michigan’s largest collection of rock art. If not for an 1881 wildfire that burned away the vegetation covering the sandstone here, we may never have known this rock art existed.
Judaculla Rock, North Carolina
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This soapstone boulder near Cullowhee has 1,548 carvings on it. No one knows what they mean, but a prevailing theory among local historians is that they map game and resources. The native Cherokee, though, believe the symbols tell how to enter the spirit world.
Track Rock Gap, Georgia
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Here’s another soapstone boulder decorated with petroglyphs, and it’s the only petroglyph site in Georgia that’s on public land. More than 100 carvings by the Creek and Cherokee are here, and they’re over 1,000 years old.
Puako Petroglyphs, Hawaii
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You’ll find these at Holoholokai Beach Park on the Big Island. There’s a section open to the public that has more than 1,200 petroglyphs. In an area dedicated as a preserve, there are over 3,000.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii
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Also on the Big Island, this national park has an easy trail leading to a large number of petroglyphs carved into volcanic rocks. After viewing the rock art, head out at sunset to watch molten lava pouring through a fissure and into the Pacific Ocean.
Reef Bay Trail, U.S. Virgin Islands
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Here, the Taino people thrived from about AD 900 to 1500. In blue basalt at the base of a tall waterfall, they carved faces into the rock. These faces had spiritual significance because they were supposed to help people connect with the spirit world.
Ozette Beach, Washington
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Olympic National Park is best known for its glaciated peaks, lush rainforests, and wild beaches. At Ozette Beach, though, you can also find petroglyphs that are up to 500 years old. Some of them depict orcas.
The 30 Most Beautiful Places in the World That Everyone Must See
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There’s no way you could ever come up with a definitive list of the world’s most beautiful places. However, if you ask around, some places come up a lot more frequently than others do.
The following are some of the places that people mention over and over again, not in any particular order.
30 Breathtaking Places You Must See Before You Die
The Two Best Scenic Wonders in Each of the Mountain States
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The Mountain States– Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico– have some of the wildest and most rugged landscapes in the United States. Because they’re so big, it can take a lot of time to visit them, so it helps to be able to plan for some specific destinations.
Following are our choices for the top two must-see outdoor locations in each of these seven states.
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