Black Tank Wash is a dry wash that runs northeast to southwest through the Cinder Cone Volcanic Field, located 15 miles east of Baker, California. The wash is about 12 miles long by 200 yards wide and is usually dry unless it is raining in the volcanic field. In most places there is no main channel so even when it does rain the water flows down the wash in a thin wide sheet. The margins of the wash are defined by ten to twenty foot vertical basalt walls. The petroglyphs below are found along a one mile section of the wash, in the center of this section is a rock shelter approximately twenty feet wide, nine feet high and up to fifteen feet deep. The rock shelter contains a panel of red pictographs executed in the late prehistoric Great Basin Painted Style of Numic rock art. Next 12 photos |
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| The rock shelter at Black Tank | Geometric pictograph |
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| Two anthropomorphs and geometric designs | A continuation of the picture to the left shows more geometric images, one with the addition of white paint added to the dominant red |
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Click to see Petroglyph Replicas of these and other rock art |
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| Two of the elements in this panel may be stick figure anthropomorphs | Books about Pictographs and Rock Art |
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| The image on the bottom right appears to be a European type ship with one sail | Representational petroglyphs at this site are rare, notably missing are bighorn sheep petroglyphs which are so common 100 miles to the west |
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| This panel contains older (repatinated) archaic rock art as well as more recent (lighter colored) Numic petroglyphs | Rows of repatinated dots are usually suggestive with archaic times |
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This petroglyph is similar to designs found further East near the Colorado River |
Noted New Jersey photographer, Tom Garvey, adds perspective to a rock art panel |
