5/12/25: History on the Rocks @ El Morro!

Steven and I drove from Grants a short distance southwest to El Morro National Monument in the western part of New Mexico. Though this area of the state looked like relative wilderness, it's always been a fairly well-traveled route. In the monument's Visitor Center, we read that living and working at the monument in the early 1900s was an adventure in itself. The duty station was remote, and the dirt roads leading in and out were often impassable during wet weather. A lack of running water or electricity made living conditions primitive. The first ranger cabin, which was also the tourist shelter, was nothing more than a three-sided shed!  

Fortunately, thanks to the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal programs initiated by President Roosevelt, a new custodian's residence and visitor station were completed in 1939. The park's superintendent and his family finally enjoyed running water and a coal furnace! 

A large sandstone bluff, or El Morro in Spanish, jutted above the surrounding landscape. As we walked along the Inscription Rock Trail, we were mindful not to stray from it because of the warnings about biological soil crusts that thrive adjacent to the park's trail. If we stepped on the brownish lumpy patches, we would destroy the crusts that are critical to plants' survival, and in such an arid area, it could take 250 years to grow back! 

The reason travelers stopped at El Morro was in front of us - the oasis. For centuries, people found their way to drink from the pool's reliable waters, which are fed from July through September mainly by rainfall and melting snow. When the pool is full, it is about 12 feet deep and holds about 200,000 gallons of water. Though the pool never empties, evaporation can shrink it from its banks until precipitation refills it. 

In the early days, a sandbank rimmed the pool, and people could walk or ride their horses around it. In the 1920s, park rangers dammed the pool to provide more water for area ranchers and their livestock. After a heavy rockfall in 1942 destroyed the dam and filled the waterhole, over 1,100 truckloads of rock were removed, and the dam was reinforced and lined with concrete. The dam is what visitors stand on today. 

Before interstates and cars, a journey from Albuquerque to Zion, about 150 miles, typically took about ten days. Imagine the relief travelers felt when they reached this shady little oasis after riding a horse for days across mountains, deserts, and lava rocks.

The black stripes on the cliff face are the "spillways" where water from the top funnels into the pool. 

Ancient trade routes between pueblos depended on El Morro's water. Hundreds of years after the ancestral Puebloans had left the area, the stop by Antonio de Espejo in 1583 marked the start of nearly two hundred years of visits by Spanish travelers. Two hundred and sixty-six years after Espeja's visit, members of the US Army surveyed the area for a new trip west, beginning the next wave of visitors as part of America's westward expansion. 

Over 2,000 petroglyphs covered the sandstone bluff, a witness to the hundreds of years people have lived or stopped here. Each group of travelers, Ancient Puebloans, Native Americans, Spaniards, and others, left its mark in its own way. Marks were incised or pecked into the sandstone using an animal antler or a harder rock called a hammerstone. Spaniards used daggers or horseshoe nails to inscribe their names and messages. Pioneers and other settlers probably used knives, nails, or other tools. 

While both men and women passed by El Morro, only a few women left their inscriptions. One exception was Miss A. F. Baley, whose inscription can be seen clearly when you click on the photo to enlarge it, and then look on the upper right. America Frances and her sister Amelia Baley were part of a wagon party headed from Missouri to California in 1858 on a route newly surveyed by the US Army known as Beale's Wagon Road, which passed by El Morro. 

If America Baley knew what she would encounter in her westward journey, she might not have continued! Just east of the Colorado River, 800 Mojave killed 9 and injured 17 in the wagon party. After retreating to New Mexico to wait out the winter, the Baley sisters and the rest of the caravan eventually made it to California. 

No doubt, most morning visitors on the Inscription Trail are disappointed when they try to read or get a decent shot of the elegant inscription penned by E. Penn. Long of Maryland in 1857 and see the pine tree's shadow. Long was a member of a US Army expedition to find a wagon route from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to the Colorado River. The group tested the usefulness of camels and eventually recommended them for crossing the deserts of the Southwest. The Army abandoned the experiment, however, at the beginning of the Civil War. 

P. (Peachy) Gilmer Breckenridge was the man in charge of the 25 camels on the 1857 expedition. He later returned to his home state of Virginia and fought in the Civil War, dying during a skirmish in 1863. 

Many Spanish travelers inscribed pasó por aquí or "passed through here." From the time Ramon Garcia Jurado moved to New Mexico as a colonist in 1693 until he died in 1760 at the age of 80, he witnessed and participated in the state's Spanish settlement. We read that he was likely on a campaign against the Navajos during his visit to El Morro in 1709. 

To the right of Jurado's inscription was a blackened one which translates to "Pedro Romero passed through here on the 2nd of August, year of 1751." These darkened inscriptions were the first attempts to preserve them by early park rangers who used graphite, aka No. 2 pencils, so they would be visible and last longer. This type of preservation ended in the 1930s. 

The last inscription from Spanish colonial times was by Andres Romero, who wrote, "Andres Romero passed through here in the year 1774." His visit was followed by turbulent times: Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, and following the US-Mexican War from 1846-1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded large areas of land to the US. This new land, the New Mexico Territory, opened the way for the last inscribers, the Americans, to make their way through El Morro.  

Some of the petroglyphs depicted animals that were once familiar in the region, such as bighorn sheep. We wondered why and when people might have etched them and the zigzag lines into the bluff.

One of the oldest and more famous El Morro inscriptions was by New Mexico's first governor, Don Juan de Oñate, in 1605, fifteen years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

Below it was one by Joseph de Paybal Basconzelos, a council member who described paying for expelled council members to return to Santa Fe from Mexico City after more than three years of banishment by New Mexico's governor. Again, click on the photo to read it more easily.

R. H. Orton's was one of many inscriptions as we walked further along the cliff face. Orton became adjutant-general of California after the Civil War. In the war's early years, the California Column, as it was known, was sent to New Mexico to reinforce Federal troops expecting Confederate hostilities. To the right of his name was an outline of a church.

The crude depiction of a man probably looked like my own attempt at drawing a stick figure in my earliest school days!

The inscription named a frontier governor, Don Diego de Vargas, well known in New Mexico. His translation means, "... who conquered for our Holy Faith and for the Royal Crown, all of New Mexico, at his own expense, was here in the year of 1692." When the Pueblo Indians revolted against their conquerors twelve years earlier, many Spanish men, women, and children were killed. Vargas, the newly appointed governor, reestablished control of the pueblos.

The morning light shining directly on some of the inscriptions made it tough to see, let alone read some of them!

I looked, but had no success finding the one in the small cove by 12-year-old Sarah Fox, who traveled with the first emigrant caravan to California in 1858. Known as Sallie, she was shot with an arrow during the attack at the Colorado River, but she survived. 

Some of the highest carvings at the end of the cliff face were inscribed by workers for the Union Pacific Railroad, which conducted a survey here in 1868. Members of the survey crew left their mark even though the project was never carried out. Instead, the Santa Fe Railroad, 25 miles to the north, rerouted travelers, thereby ending El Morro's role as a stopover on the route west.

Early preservation efforts: For over a century, park managers have been concerned with protecting inscriptions from the forces of nature. Early efforts included covering the carvings with paraffin, chiseling grooves to reroute water flows, and, as mentioned above, darkening inscriptions with pencils to offset the erosion. These well-intentioned attempts to preserve the inscriptions ended in the 1930s, although remnants are still visible in some Spanish carvings. 

The inscriptions and petroglyphs at El Morro are an essential link to the past. Although they have endured until the present, they will not last forever. Sand grains wash away, rocks crumble and fall, and lichens and clay deposits cover the historic carvings, resulting in part of the nation's heritage fading away. I read that the National Park Service hopes to delay that deterioration for as long as possible by monitoring and treating inscriptions and the rocks where they are carved. When the loss of inscriptions may be imminent, park conservators may use grout to fill holes to keep out water, secure rock slabs with pins that are drilled in, and strengthen loose rock around inscriptions that are eroding with consolidants. 

I'll leave my "summary" of the importance and inherent wealth of El Morro to Charles Lummis, who documented and wrote extensively about the national monument, stating in 1892, "It is the most precious cliff, historically, possessed by any nation on earth."

Next post: Touring the Zuni Pueblo with a tribal leader, visiting (and eating at!) Pie Town, and being wowed by the Very Large Array, all later that day.

Posted on May 24th, 2025, from Albuquerque in north-central New Mexico, where we arrived tonight after spending almost two fabulous weeks in the southern part of the state. We'll head home to Denver after exploring the city and environs for several days. As always, please take care of yourself and your loved ones.