Just because Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s scalpel reducing specific national monuments to allow for more fossil fuel exploration skipped over the pristine Carrizo Plain, we shouldn’t feel lucky in California. The federal government still may lop acreage off of the 246,000 acres comprising our closest national monument.
Zinke didn’t give the sacred Carrizo Plain a hometown discount; he just knew the additional beating that the administration would take if he added it to the announced mutilation of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. Bears Ears lost 85 percent, and nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante has been diminished by 45 percent.
The Carrizo Plain is California’s largest remaining natural grassland, and occasionally it has been called the “American Serengeti,” although there are some important differences. The Carrizo today is a broad plain rimmed on the west by the Caliente Range and on the east by the San Andreas Rift Zone and the Temblor Range. The Temblors, a transverse range, display vivid geological evidence of the San Andreas Fault displayed at the base of the Elkhorn scarp.
Merely a remnant today, the Carrizo once was a vast grassland where tule elk and pronghorn antelope grazed, giant kangaroo rats (a heteromyid rodent) flourished, raptors and condors soared overhead, and ancient Chumash villages dotted the inundated Soda Lake. Long ago, these white alkali flats were permanently submerged, and a rich ecosystem had developed around it.
In addition to the gleaming white Soda Lake, another significant feature of the Carrizo is world-famous Painted Rock with its many pictographic panels of signal importance to the Chumash and Yokuts Native Americans.
When I visited the Carrizo in mid-February after a 3½-hour drive via San Luis Obispo (see 4.1.1.), we arrived before the small Goodwin Education Center had opened, and the “lift bar” at the closed gate on the dirt road leading to the Painted Rock formation malfunctioned and remained down. (Note: You must obtain a self-guided or, after March 1, a group-guided, pass and keypad number from the Bureau of Land Management by clicking here.)
Nothing daunted, hiking mates Mr. C, Crazy Peter and I immediately accepted our fate and chose to hike the four miles from the center to Painted Rock along the closed road. Like modern-day pilgrims to Spain’s Santiago de Compostela, we cheerfully began our unanticipated long day hike after checking our day packs for extra water, lunch and maps.
We found a wonderful quietude punctured only by the cries of birds and rustling critters in the nearby grasses. Counting the giant kangaroo rat and blunt-nosed leopard lizard, there are 13 endangered species that call the Carrizo their home territory. The native California tule elk comprised one of these species, and while there were more than 500,000 of them at one time, by 1870 this unique subspecies of elk was deemed extinct (cervus canadensis nannodes). In the late 1870s, however, a single breeding pair was discovered, and today there are about 4,000 tule elk roaming California, with some of the key herds well-protected in the Carrizo Plain National Monument. These splendid ungulates and the other 12 species need the full protection of the 246,000 acres.
Along our ritualistic trudge to prostrate ourselves before the stone vulva comprising the Painted Rock formation, we saw at least 60 tule elk in the distance — we watched them, and they observed us, and then cantered away after awhile. With our binoculars we also could discern a few pronghorn antelope.
Winter is the best time to visit the Carrizo Plain if you plan to hike around, since as a sort of mini-Death Valley it has very little precipitation and is marked by very hot and quite cold temperatures (in the low 20s around Feb. 20). Santa Barbara gets about 18 inches of rainfall per year, whereas the Carrizo averages 8 to 10 inches per year. There are no towns or settlements nearby, with Santa Margarita, population 1,300, the closest place to purchase civilized items.
The other excellent time to visit the Carrizo is after spring rains — if they come at all — when the so-called desert “superbloom” happens some years. There has been so little precipitation this year that, according to the BLM, it’s unlikely to occur this spring.
It’s hard to fathom farmers giving the Carrizo a try in such arid conditions, but between 1885 and 1945, desperate “dryland grain farmers” tried their luck with sporadic success at best. As you begin the trek to Painted Rock, several 100-year-old tractors and combines litter the route.
Painted Rock in the Carrizo Plain — to be distinguished from another Painted Rock on the Sierra Madre Ridge — stands out as a smooth, horseshoe-shaped formation of marine sandstone measuring about 45 feet tall and 250 feet across. The many pictographs on the interior of this cleft rock, the inside of the horseshoe, have captured the imagination of visitors and remain vital to indigenous Native American tribes to this day. Sadly, at one time, “cowboys” and American hunters actually shot up some of these panels to the horror of more culturally aware visitors today, and to the despair of Native Americans seeking to understand their cultural heritage.
It is important to respect this giant cultural artifact and the glorious pictographs hidden in its cleft. My friends and I approach with gravity, stand before the maimed panels, toss some American Spirit tobacco to the north, and keep our distance from the boulders strewn about.
Among the dozens of images in the panels, using our binoculars, we observed a coyote figure, a horned “humanoid,” zig-zags and concentric circles, as well as the commonly accepted painted sign for “rain” — which the indigenous peoples prayed for just like we do today in our heavy drought. We also discerned several depictions of the Pacific pond turtle (clemmys marmorata). Since this is the only indigenous water turtle in California, and the Carrizo Plain is beyond its range, many of the rock art designs date to a much older period in Chumash history (“Middle” rather than “Late Horizon”).
Whereas archaeologists deliberate about the relative age of these glorious rock paintings, casual visitors like Crazy Peter, Mr. C and me simply admire them from a distance. Climbing on the rock is forbidden, as is touching the pictographs themselves or bringing in dogs or bikes. Once the Soda Lake dried up, most of the Chumash seem to have left, and later Yokuts shamans entered the picture. The way the BLM describes the area today reminds us how inhospitable it was in much earlier times, too: “There is no water, food or fuel at Carrizo Plain National Monument. The nearest services are 15 miles from the south entrance and 60 miles from the north entrance. Cell service is spotty, restrooms are limited, and many of the roads are unpaved dirt or gravel.”
Without the iron-clad protection of the Carrizo Plain National Monument’s full 246,000 acres, the intense beauty and distinct aura of Painted Rock and its rock art will be compromised, as it was by trigger-happy target shooters in the 1920s. The many endangered species also will be in greater danger, and further, this glorious monument with its austere beauty won’t be available for our children to visit or for Native Americans to have specific ceremonies there.
Before Zinke and this petroleum-loving administration strike again, obtain your online reservation and visit the Carrizo Plain with your children. You can overnight camp without cost or reservation at Selby Camp or the KCL Camp (bring water).
4.1.1.
» The route to the north entrance of the Carrizo Plain requires a drive on Highway 101 to San Luis Obispo, and then on up the Cuesta Grade to Santa Margarita (exit 211). Drive through town and stay on California 58 East to Soda Lake Road, where you see the Carrizo Plain sign. We returned the same way, but you also can drive the 30 miles down to the south entrance and join Highway 33/166 and drive to Santa Maria, and then home again on Highway 101.
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity, and has written extensively about the local backcountry. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in the Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read additional columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
