ATV Adventures: A mystery on Lost Spring Mesa
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- The cliff we looked over and saw the ATV that had fallen off.
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- The water glyph we were searching for when we started our ride.
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- The pictograph of a family we found on the wall of a cave on Lost Spring Mesa.
Lost Spring Mesa near Apple Valley in Washington County features at least four Anasazi petroglyphs that have been labeled water glyphs. More than 270 of these symbols have been found throughout an area of 2,000 square miles in the Arizona Strip. Unlike most petroglyphs, water glyphs are carved into horizontal rock on the ground. They are about 48 inches long by 24 inches wide and consist of a circle intersected by a directional line that extends beyond the circle. They include a dot inside the circle and, sometimes, another on the outside. Carved almost an inch deep into the rock, they are usually found on the edge of a cliff.
When I told my friend Terry Maxfield about them, he wanted to see one, so we planned a trip last fall. The GPS tracks I had took us on trails that had been gated since I first visited the place. We were blocked from access to the water glyphs.
I talked to my friend Dale Grange, a longtime Washington County resident and member of the Tri-State ATV Club. He knew another way to access Lost Spring Mesa and offered to take me and a few of my riding buddies. Dale took us to see more than water glyphs. When I told Terry that I had a track that would take us onto the mesa, we planned a trip.
This trip started as many others did – a stop at the Mav to top off the gas tanks and partake of the haute cuisine offered there. Well, at least the food was hot, warm, and we hit the road, headed for Colorado City and a backcountry adventure, with no idea what we were going to encounter.
Highway 59 changes to 389 at the Arizona border. Entering Colorado City, we turned west on 1600 South, then left onto Berry Knoll Blvd, where we parked and unloaded along the street. Continuing south, we turned right onto County Road 5 and headed for Lost Spring Mesa.
I was able to find an area that Dale had shown me, which had been inhabited by the Anasazi long ago. There was a shallow cave with a wall pictograph of a family. It consisted of a mother, a father, and a young child.
Continuing our ride, the trail turned north and then west to the edge of the mesa. We were definitely on a desert ride. We saw cactus everywhere in several varieties. Junipers with their blue-grey berries covering the ground. Some of the trees showed evidence of a long-ago fire.
We stopped for a break at the edge of the mesa. Taking in the views from the top, we saw the valley floor 1,100 feet below us. I could see some metal debris in a gulley at the base of the cliff. Dale told me stories about people who didn’t want Las Vegas cars to be found, brought them here, and pushed them over the edge of the mesa. Given the rough nature of the trail we came in on, I doubted the credibility of those stories.
I shifted my position a little to get a better view of the base of the cliff. That is when I saw it. Not some rusted piece of indeterminate metal, but an ATV lying on its side. Blue and white, it appeared to me to be an older model Polaris. It was obvious that it had fallen from the mesa, but it was difficult to determine how long it had been there.
Not knowing what to do about what we had discovered, we followed the trail on the edge of the cliff until we found the water glyph we were hunting. We had gone to a lot of trouble to see it, but here we were studying the glyph at the edge of the cliff on Lost Spring Mesa.
We had found it, and that was reason enough to set up our camp chairs in some shade and partake of some trail cuisine. That is a fancy name for some snacks that we broke out to hold us over until we could eat a proper dinner.
The wrecked ATV at the base of the cliff bothered me until I called Dale and talked to him about it. I don’t know where it will go from there. When you go, take plenty of water, keep the rubber side down, and ponder this mystery on Lost Spring Mesa.
Lynn R. Blamires can be reached at quadmanone@gmail.com.
