Silver City, Nevada – Silver City has plenty of significant historical sites related to the Comstock Lode era, but the town also has cultural sites such as petroglyphs, or rock art, of the Washoe people and possibly Paiute people. In fact, Silver City’s little known rock art site is unusual in that it includes paintings, lightly carved images, and chiseled petroglyphs all in one site.
A 1992 descriptive report by C.L. Rogers includes fascinating details about an officially designated petroglyph site located on private land in Silver City, within the Comstock National Historic District. In her report, Rogers explained that she used a large-scale contour map of the town provided by Mike Donovan of Silver City, plus an aerial photo map. She was able to list details of Native American work, and offered indepth reporting on other historic art panels. After visiting the site about eight times, she concluded that the Silver City site is "a many-faceted site, worthy of more intensive study.”
She noted that the site includes 75 "panels" of rock art, including prehistoric curvilinear and realistic petroglyphs, historic and modern petroglyphs, prehistoric pictographs, historic and modern pictographs, Great Basin scratched panels, and historic and modern scratches, mostly in the form of names and dates of site visitors. With reference to names and dates of site visitors, she wrote that "the many signatures from the 1860's, 1870s and 1880s testify that citizens of Silver City in its early days were very familiar with this fascinating site.”
Rogers explains that other than her report, she was aware of no other formal research on the site up to 1992, other than a study of rat middens in one of the site's rock shelters by Peter Wigand of the Desert Research Institute.
According to her report, "the site consists of much more than petroglyphs...Great Basin scratched panels are also numerous...Additionally, there are two rock shelters at the site, each associated with elaborate pictographs in red pigment, and possibly in combination with white pigments.” She described the exterior surfaces of one of the rock shelter areas as "lavishly decorated in red...Here are painted big horn sheep, possibly deer, rainbows, stick figures, and lines.”
C.L. Rogers described a particular area of the site as "unusual and noteworthy." This spot is "near a beautiful, long incised feather design and pictograph line near the base of a boulder" that she suggested may "possibly be the site of a human burial.”
Of the two rock shelters where the rock art can be found, one is a "low, wide-mouthed shelter" that "widens to a 'room' with a blackened ceiling.” Rogers suggested that this spot would have been an ideal vantage point for spotting large game, and other people, for many surrounding miles.
Rogers went on to write that "across the site, 26 panels were recorded that display only pecked Native American elements. Thirteen others include petroglyphs in combination with scratched lines, grids and cross-hatching...Scratched rock art is less common than pecked art at the Silver City site.” Rogers also found a possible grinding slick and unifacial mano, but no other particular evidence, such as camp debris, that the site was domestic in nature (items found might have been seed grinding equipment).
She noted that although the Silver City site was NOT recorded by Julian Steward in his 1920's study of Great Basin Rock Art, the site is located in the region designated the "western Nevada" stylistic area. This is relevant because of the fifty elements that Steward "selected for distribution plots, most are present at Silver City.” The few NOT present include: stars, spirals, human hands, connected dots, gridirons, bird tracks, and angular meanders. Rogers also noted that there were "no pit and groove panels nor faceted boulders at the site.”
One could also compare elements at the Silver City site to elements identified by Heizer and Baumhoff in 1962, Rogers explained, and using that criteria, "at least 40 of 58 are present in the Silver City site.”
Rogers also noticed two possible atlatls (a stick used to propel a spear or dart) shown on two different panels, and she surmised that these "could indicate that both art types were created at the site at least 2,000 years ago.” She went on to explain that the "site is located near the ethnographic boundary between Washoe and Northern Paiute territories. If the atlatl depictions are really atlatls, then the site predates the arrival of the Northern Paiutes to this area, if one accepts the Numic Expansion hypothesis. The site may be a Washoe-derived site, or the work of people who lived here prior to the Northern Paiute, but who were something other than Washoe...Still, the Washoe connection may be the most feasible one. If the scratched art was the work of Northern Paiute, then the site represents use and re-use over a long period of time."
Additional information about Silver City's petroglyphs can be found in various other publications and archives, including in a section about the "Virginia Range" in a 1982 Cultural Resource Overview of the Carson City District and West Central Nevada: "The Silver City Petroglyph site (26Lyl03) was recorded by the BLM in 1975. The site consists of a basalt cliff covered with petroglyphs and pictographs, some of anthropomorphs and big horn sheep. More recent paintings and glyphs also adorn this cliff and probably date to the early historic period (several Chinese characters were noted). Two caves in the cliff face are adorned with rock art. Davis (personal communication) has recovered a Neotoma midden from one of the caves. The BLM rechecked the site in 1978, noting the occurrence of a great deal of vandalism, and protective measures were recommended. The site is particularly interesting when viewed in the context of the chain or rock art sites that exist in the immediate vicinity (see the Truckee River section).
Furthermore, pictographs are rare; this site is one of but a handful of such sites in Nevada, and as such should be protected. The nature of the site also mandates some formal recognition, such as nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. In any case, the site should be thoroughly recorded before it is destroyed by vandalism." https://archive.org/stream/culturalresource00pend/culturalresource00pend_djvu.txt
* The map below can be found in Vol. 18 of the year 2000 Nevada Archaeologist publication in a paper by Sue Ann Monteleone called "Rock Art in the Homeland and on the Border: A Look at Washoe Territory." https://nvarch.org/amcs/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2000-Volume-18-Nevada-Archaeologist.pdf
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