Inscription Rock -- El Morro National Monument, NM
N 35° 02.351 W 108° 21.074
12S E 741618 N 3880596
For thousands of years, human beings ranging from Ancient Puebloans to Spanish conquistadors to pioneers to railroad crews have been scratching their names into Inscription Rock.
Waymark Code: WMMAHZ
Location: New Mexico, United States
Date Posted: 08/22/2014
Views: 6
Inscription Rick at El Morro is not as famous as Register Cliff in Wyoming, but the grafittos are older -- some of the pictographs and petroglyphs here were left by the Atsinna Puebloan people who dispersed thousands of years ago from this mesa to the Zuni and Acoma pueblos nearby. Other inscribers included Spanish conquistadors and Union pacific Railroad crews.
Inscription Rock is reached easily by way of a short paved trail loop from the Visitor Center.
From the National Park Service website: (
visit link)
"Explorers and travelers have known of the pool by the great rock for centuries. A valuable water source and resting place, many who passed by inscribed their names and messages in the rock next to petroglyphs left by ancient Puebloans. The ruins of a large pueblo located on top of El Morro were vacated by the time the Spaniards arrived in the late 1500s, and its inhabitants may have moved to the nearby pueblos in Zuni and Acoma. As the American West grew in population, El Morro became a break along the trail for those passing through and a destination for sightseers. As the popularity of the area increased, so did the tradition of carving inscriptions on the rock. To preserve the historical importance of the area and initiate preservation efforts on the old inscriptions, El Morro was established as a national monument by a presidential proclamation on December 8, 1906."