Round Trip Distance: 0.3 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 5280 - 5342 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 30 mins.
Trailhead: 37.33032, -108.87320
Fee: none
Attractions: petroglyphs
The McElmo Creek Petroglyphs are located about 16 miles west of Cortez, Colorado along Road G. Two panels of petroglyphs can be found at the site. One panel has quite a few images that are unfortunately accompanied by graffiti. The second panel has a large image of a burro and a Spanish fighting bull.
For turn-by-turn directions enter 37.33032, -108.87320 into your driving app. After following Road G for about 15.7 miles from US 491 look for a spot where you can pull safely all the way off of the pavement. There are good spots on the north side of the road a little before where the petroglyphs are located and a little beyond.
The next challenge is to find a good spot to cross the irrigation ditch that runs along the north side of the road. We crossed it about a quarter mile before the petroglyphs so that we could explore the cliffs in the area.
This caused us some difficult scrambling in a few places as we worked our way toward the petroglyphs.
We did spot some pottery in the process but nothing else of any note to make the added effort worthwhile.
From the direction of our approach the first panel that we came to was the one that has what looks like a burro and a Spanish fighting bull. Our assumption was that the images were probably Spanish in origin and maybe to date them by the 1937 E F inscription.
Further down the cliff are the much older images that were made by prehistoric Native people with a couple of more recent additions.
These images might be showing a map of one or more nearby pueblos.
Several of the shapes look like they might be blocks of rooms.
At least one of the warrior, or hunter, figures appears to have a bow and arrow.
It is obvious that these two images were added at a later time. The heart with the piercing arrow shows European influence. Above the heart are the same initials E. F. as on the previous panel so its probably safe to assume that person was the artists, or vandal, depending upon how you base your consideration.
Rather than retrace our steps back the way we came we simply stepped across the irrigation ditch next to a cottonwood tree below the petroglyphs where the ditch was narrowest and then stepped right out onto the highway.
