Corn Springs Campout and visit to McCoy Springs Petroglyphs

Last weekend a group of club members had an overnight car camp at Corn Spring, a BLM Campground up highway 10 near Blythe. We had great food and a wonderful time sitting around the campfire. Corn Spring has been a stopping place for travelers for probably 1,000's of years.

There are interesting petroglyphs at Corn Spring but we had all seen those before. We drove up the highway to the Paylan/McCoy wilderness in our 4 wheel drive vehicles. It used to be possible to drive right up to McCoy Spring but since the area has become a wilderness we could only drive to the boundary. It was about a 10 mile round trip hike to the Spring. We found the petroglyphs and took lots of pictures. There is also old graffiti from the 19th and 20th century. The spring had also been a stage stop. One interesting thing about the petroglyphs here are that some of the new ones are dated. The amount of desert varnish that covers these dated, new petroglyphs can be measure and an estimate made of the age of the older petroglyphs. Some of them, by this reckoning are over 5,000 years old.

 

Here is a picture of the spring and some china shards that we found.