Seminole Canyon

Seminole Canyon

When we pulled into Seminole Canyon State Park, Clara knew she was home. Evidently it's the "in utero" vibrations of being born in Hardin, Montana, in the "Big Sky" country, but she has always felt most at home in the widest of wide open spaces, preferably with Sonoran desert vegetation surrounding her – and that's Seminole Canyon.

The outstanding attraction of SCSP, other than its general environs, is the array of pictographs found there; so Clara took a guided hike down into the canyon to view some of them. The pictographs are found in a "gallery" underneath that rock outcropping in the picture, so it's down into the canyon then up to the "gallery." These particular pictographs are thought to be about 8,000 years old, and evidently the shelter provided by the rock outcropping is what has kept them sheltered from the weather and still visible today.

The sculpture is done in the style of the pictographs and is called "The Peace Bringer."

Along the way they passed what is thought to be the oldest mesquite tree in existence, about 200 years. (Would you want to live to be 200 if you knew you'd wind up looking like that??)

In case you're one of the inveterately curious who is wondering about the name "Seminole Canyon" since the Seminoles are from Florida, here's the straight skinny. From 1872 until 1914 there was a mixed troop of Seminoles and black Americans who were garrisoned at Fort Clark, TX, whose job was to guard the western frontiers of Texas against marauding Apaches and Comanches
from Arizona and New Mexico. The troop was recognized as having done an excellent job, and the canyon was named in their honor.