Most Stehekin visitors never see the Painted Rocks. Approximately three-quarters of a mile separates the Lodge porch from where early people placed pictographs.
During the summer months the pictographs are visible near the waterline. During the winter when the lake drops twenty-one feet, you lift your eyes upward to see these drawings. An observer might wonder, "If the lake is raised twenty-one feet and pictographs are viewed near eye level, the people who created the pictographs either scaled the wall to create their work or the conditions of the lake were quite different when this white faced wall was used as a message board."
 |
| Crossing the lake in any season can offer an exquisite play of light on the water. |
 |
A trip across the lake during the winter might offer the opportunity to see some swans.
|
 |
| Some of the symbols painted on the wall. The figure on the left is intriguing. |
If you get the opportunity, visit the Painted Rocks.
I always enjoyed taking my boat over to the rock painting's.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting and beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThe most logical scenario regarding the "pictographs is that the paintings were placed after 1892 when the dam was constructed at Chelan. The water rose 21 feet plus or minus. Prior to that time the painters would have to have either hung from long ropes a long ways from the top or had some kind of boat and they used some form or ladder to place the paintings where we see them today. Easy to see the fallacy in those explanations. Hate to burst your bubble but it is just very old Graffit and nothing more.
ReplyDeleteThe same painted rocks are mentioned by Caroline C. Leighton in an entry dated “FORT COLVILLE, July 20, 1866” at the beginning of Chapter IV of “Life at Puget Sound With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon, and California 1865-1881”, (Boston; Lee and Shepard, Publishers, New York, Charles T. Dillingham 1884; Copyright, 1888, By Lee and Shepard). She wrote: “Far to the south-east, this stream widens into Lake Pend d'Oreille. On this lake are the wonderful painted rocks, rising far above the water, upon which, at the height of several hundred feet, are the figures of men and animals, which the Indians say are the work of a race that preceded them. They are afraid to approach the rocks, lest the waters should rise in anger, and ingulf them. There are also hieroglyphic figures far up on the rocks of Lake Chelan, which is supposed to have once been an arm of the Columbia. These paintings or picture-writings must have been made when the water was so high in the lakes that they could be done by men in boats.” This is proof that the figures are NOT modern graffiti, and that they existed much earlier, because even the native people recognized them as having been painted there previously. The author’s description of the interconnected lakes indicates to a careful reader with a modern knowledge of geology that the area was heavily glaciated, even though Miss Leighton did not know the proper terms for what she saw.
Delete