Round Trip Distance: 1.8 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4300 - 4386 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 2 hrs.
Trailhead: Vogel Canyon Picnic Area
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs
The Vogel Canyon Petroglyphs are located in the Comanche National Grassland south of La Junta, Colorado. Access to the petroglyphs is along a well developed trail from the picnic area that leads gently down into the canyon and along the cliffs where visitors will find scores of petroglyphs and several kiosks that provide information about both the images and the people that created them.
For turn-by-turn directions enter Vogel Canyon Picnic Area into your driving app. From La Junta it will direct you south on Highway 109 for 14.3 miles where you will turn right onto the David Canyon Road, CR 802. After another 1.3 miles turn left at the sign for Vogel Canyon and just over another mile and a half you will arrive at the Picnic Area. The graveled roads from Highway 109 are very suitable to all forms of vehicles during dry conditions.
The Canyon Trail begins on the west side of the Picnic Area.
After dropping gently off of the mesa follow the trail along the cliffs on the east side of the canyon.
Just past the half mile point from the trailhead the first kiosk and petroglyphs are found.
The image in the center that resembles a peace sign has a line through it where the lower end of the line is piercing an image that looks like a deer. That would make you think that the image was perhaps an atlatl.
If you look closely you can see an anthropomorphic figure with bird hands and bird feet. There are more of these images that, although faint, are very interesting. This particular image is actually shown in the lower right hand corner of one of the kiosks making it an iconic image for Vogel Canyon.
Here is the figure of a man standing with his arms akimbo. Between his feet is a circle with a line extending below it that dissects another circle.
Here is a classic vulva image.
Off to the right and up higher there is an image of a teepee.
Further south along the cliff there are a couple of spots where there are images that we didn't mark on the map. The lower group of images that we circled in the middle are easy to spot from the trail. If you look closer you can spot more images higher up on the cliff as well as a few on either side. I didn't notice the images that were higher up until I was looking at the photo on the computer or I would have gotten some close ups of them.
There are several dozen more images in this same area that are harder to see but still interesting to notice. They include more anthropomorphic and geometric shapes and several more traditional images of atlatls.
Further along the cliff is another area of images where there is a kiosk that we marked on the map as P2.
Most of the images here appear faint due to what looks like a newer layer of patina that has formed over the images since the time when they were first created.
Here is a rayed circle with a line pattern that looks like a sun.
It is interesting how often circular figures appear that include images of shields, suns, atlatls, and what not.
A little further along the cliff there is a cave that can be spotted from below.
The cave showed the usual signs of habitation and several boulders that were covered with petroglyphs, sharpening groves, and cupules.
