The Big Painted Cave Pictographs are located in the Lava Beds National Monument near Tulelake, California. The cave is along the well maintained Symbol Bridge Trail. Big Painted Cave is at about the 3/4 mile point from the trailhead and Symbol Bridge Cave is another quarter mile past that. Of the 2 sites Symbol Bridge has the better pictographs.
For turn-by-turn directions to the trailhead enter Symbol Bridge Trail into your driving app.
Included with this post is the GPS file and map that we plan to use for our first visit. If you don't want to wait for us to get around to it feel free to try the GPS file and map for yourself. With no guarantee, of course, but they most often prove valuable for us.
Download GPS planning file:
