Exploring an Ancient Canyon on a Forgotten Stagecoach Road

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hey everyone, welcome to Sid Track Adventures. This is Steve. Behind me off in the distance is Black Mountain with Black Canyon cutting through it.

[00:00:11]Despite its remote location, people have been traveling out here for centuries.

[00:00:16]From ancient Native Americans to miners to the stage coach, and today we're going to try and cross this dry lake bed and see what history those earlier travelers left behind.

[00:00:31]We are starting out today just outside of the town of Hinckley, which was made famous by the movie Aaron Brochovich.

[00:00:39]Though I'm not quite sure they put that on their tourist brochures.

[00:00:47]The first thing we're going to need to do is cross Harper Dry Lake. The road runs straight as a needle across it. And even from here, you can see the road on the other side of the lake.

[00:01:02]This is a closed basin, so any water that gets in here only leaves by evaporation.

[00:01:08]It gets pretty hot out here, though, so the water usually doesn't stick around long.

[00:01:15]With that being said, I've tried to do this drive before, and the last time I came out here, the lake wasn't so dry, and I ended up having to turn around. It hasn't rained in a while, so hopefully we'll be okay today. Or this will be an extremely short video.

[00:01:36]I believe the scientific name for a dry lake bed that has water on it is a lake.

[00:01:49]During the last ice age, this lake was fed by the Mojave River and even supported fish.

[00:01:55]There were marshes out here until the early 1900s, but groundwater pumping eventually dried those out. There are some man-made attempts to restore part of the wetlands on the south side of the lake going on with mixed results.

[00:02:13]During World War II, here at Harper Dry Lake, Howard Hughes had a secret aircraft testing facility. This is where his experimental D2 aircraft was assembled and tested.

[00:02:26]The D2 later helped lead to the XF11, the reconnaissance plane Hughes famously crashed in Beverly Hills during a test flight in 1946.

[00:02:46]Luckily, the lake bed is dry today and no issues crossing it.

[00:03:01]Black Mountain is part of the Calico Mountain Range, probably best known for the Calico Ghost Town, which was once owned by Walter Not of Knottberry Farm fame.

[00:03:14]It gets the name Black Mountain from the black volcanic rock that covers the mountain.

[00:03:26]We've about made it to the mountain.

[00:03:29]Because it's so flat out here and you can see for so far, the distances are somewhat deceptive. From where we entered the dry lake to the mountain, it's about 8 miles.

[00:03:43]Now that we've crossed Harper Dry Lake and made it to Black Mountain, we're going to be cutting through the mountain using Black Canyon, then traveling along the back of it along a route that's been used for centuries by anyone trying to get through this part of the desert.

[00:04:05]I'm just making a quick stop to air down the tires a bit because it's getting a little sandy.

[00:04:10]But from here, you could really see how Black Mountain got its name.

[00:04:24]Long before this was a road, native peoples were moving through these mountains. Then later came miners, prospectors, and anyone trying to cut across the Mojave the hard way.

[00:04:39]The Calico Mountains exploded with mining activity after silver was discovered in 1881. But this pass actually predates the silver boom in the Calos. And as we'll see later, silver wasn't the only thing they were looking for out here.

[00:04:59]Here's a look back down Black Canyon the way we've come.

[00:05:10]The reason I've stopped right here is because I just noticed one of these signs. And usually where there's one of these signs, there are petetroglyphs.

[00:05:18]Though it looks like the sign is gone.

[00:05:23]But there are petetroglyphs here because I see some right over here.

[00:05:28]There are a lot of more recent carvings such as these initials.

[00:05:33]But if we look right here, it's kind of faint.

[00:05:37]There's a design carved into this rock.

[00:05:42]A few designs actually.

[00:05:51]Unfortunately, at least so far, I'm seeing a lot more of these more modern carvings than ancient ones.

[00:06:06]I'm actually seeing quite a bit of names and initials that have been carved into this canyon over the last 100 years or so.

[00:06:20]Here's a human figure. But with so much modern graffiti out here, I'm not sure if this is ancient or modern.

[00:06:37]To me, these ones up here look modern, like somebody was trying to copy the ancient style.

[00:06:47]This name here, A. Tilman. He was sort of the Banksy of his day, writing his name in a few places across the Mojave.

[00:06:57]Not much is known about him other than he came through in 1874, and he was apparently either heading to or coming from San Francisco.

[00:07:09]People have tried to dig up more information on him, but so far, not much has been found.

[00:07:17]There are at least a few places he wrote his name along this road alone.

[00:07:28]There are a few petetroglyphs over here.

[00:07:31]It's said that there are at least 12,000 petetroglyphs in the Black Mountain area. And this is an extremely important site.

[00:07:39]Some archaeologists believe some of the oldest petetroglyphs in the Mojave can be found here. dating as far back as 12,000 years made by people who are here at the end of the Ice Age.

[00:07:55]But we're going to see a far more impressive site later. So, let's go ahead and get back on the road, or at least what passes for a road.

[00:08:10]While the human history of this place may go back as far as 12,000 years, the written history of Black Canyon really begins in 1873 when silver was discovered in the Paname Mountains north of here.

[00:08:30]Those mines were incredibly remote. so remote and so dangerous that even Wells Fargo refused to service the area because of outlaws.

[00:08:41]That's how dangerous this area was. Even the people who moved gold for a living wouldn't come out here.

[00:08:53]Shipments of silver were robbed so often that it said that miners started casting silver into 500lb balls just to make it too heavy to steal on horseback.

[00:09:10]And this just looks like the type of terrain that outlaws would be ambushing stage coaches in.

[00:09:20]At the time, the nearest railroad was still about 25 miles east of Los Angeles. And this route through Black Canyon became one of the most direct connections between those mines and the railroad.

[00:09:39]The road itself was built by Aaron Lane, who was a trader who ran a post near what is now Victorville using Chinese labor. It took about 6 weeks to build.

[00:09:56]We are now at the site of an old well and stage station for the Paname Transportation Company.

[00:10:04]It looks like there might be a trough over here.

[00:10:07]This is actually the site of the second stage station. The original was about a mile back down the road. And there are a lot of bees flying around here.

[00:10:19]150 years ago, this would have been one of the last spots to get water for your horses or mules for a while.

[00:10:29]Here's the spring over here. We'll fight the bees to take a closer look.

[00:10:38]This stop was also known as Dove Springs and Pigeon Springs. Though it isn't a natural spring, it's a handd.

[00:10:46]Surprisingly, it still has water in it and a lot of bees.

[00:10:58]It's a little safer to talk about the well from over here.

[00:11:02]I believe from here the next water source would have been at Granite Wells, which is about 17 mi or so to the north.

[00:11:16]From here to Granite Wells, it's pretty much nothing but open desert. So, I'm sure getting here was quite a relief.

[00:11:26]According to desert historian Bill Man, the stages would make an overnight stop here, traveling in both directions, and the passengers would often dine on desert turkey, otherwise known as buzzards.

[00:11:43]The stage building would have been around here somewhere, but it doesn't look like there's anything left of it.

[00:11:49]At least nothing I've seen so far.

[00:11:54]Looks like there's a trail heading this way as well. If the building would have been wood, it has long since been salvaged.

[00:12:02]Wood was a scarce commodity out here, so any abandoned wooden buildings usually got reused.

[00:12:17]It's amazing to think that 150 years ago, this was the center of activity for this area. And now there's no one else for miles.

[00:12:34]But there is still more to see out here.

[00:12:36]So, let's keep going.

[00:12:40]Of course, as we've seen, this path was used by Native Americans long before any stage coaches came through, but it's also been rumored that the Spanish came out here and buried treasure, but who knows?

[00:13:00]I don't think there's any real evidence for that, just local legends.

[00:13:08]the right side of the road, the mountain itself is the Black Mountain Wilderness Area, so wilderness rules apply there, and you can't really search for treasure anyway.

[00:13:21]While there may or may not have been Spanish treasure out here, people did come out here looking to make a fortune.

[00:13:28]In the 1880s, there was a silver boom in the calos, but it was in the early 1900s that people came out here looking for a different kind of treasure.

[00:13:43]And to take a look at that, we're going to head a couple of miles down this side road.

[00:13:56]This place is called Scouts Cove and it was the site of an opal mining camp in the early 1900s.

[00:14:03]The opal mining here was financed by the Tiffany Jewelry Company of New York.

[00:14:10]And I'm not sure that I've ever been to an opal mining camp before.

[00:14:15]I'm looking around for opals, but I'll be honest, I have no idea what a rock that may have an opal in it might look like.

[00:14:25]How this place got the name Scouts Cove, is lost to time. No one seems to know.

[00:14:35]The opal miners here, or at least one of them, decided that they were going to carve their home into this tufa dome here.

[00:14:45]So, we have what looks like a house from The Hobbit.

[00:14:58]Let's take a look inside. You never know what you're going to find in one of these things. Hopefully, a bat doesn't jump out at us.

[00:15:07]It looks pretty bat- free.

[00:15:10]You can see there have been some fires in here.

[00:15:15]These birds just about gave me a heart attack. They waited till I came in to ambush me.

[00:15:27]Okay, it's bird free in here now. And there's some sort of wire hanging from the wall here. I don't know if they had some sort of electrical setup in here or if this was used to hang clothes or equipment.

[00:15:48]And you could see this notch carved into the back. This would have been where the fireplace or stove would have been. You can see the smoke stains all around it.

[00:15:58]And I wouldn't be surprised if there's a vent carved into the ceiling.

[00:16:03]Hopefully there's not another bird up here waiting to get me. It looks like there may have been a hole up here.

[00:16:10]We'll have to get on top and take a look from above.

[00:16:14]This place probably stayed pretty warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

[00:16:23]I guess this room is occasionally still occupied. Someone's been out here recently and use this fire pit. I could still smell it, but we haven't seen another person all day.

[00:16:39]Let's head up on top and see if we can find a vent.

[00:16:49]And yeah, it looks like there's one right here.

[00:16:55]So, I imagine if you came out here a 100 years ago on a cold winter's morning, you would have seen smoke rising from this hole. If you came from the other side of the mound and you didn't know this was here, you might have thought it was a geyser or a volcano.

[00:17:12]And there's another little notch here. I can't tell if this is natural or man-made.

[00:17:25]If you have ever wondered what a place where opals come from looks like, well, here you go.

[00:17:42]And it looks like we may have found a chimney for that carved out room.

[00:17:46]Or at least a chimney. I'm sure this isn't the original.

[00:17:54]From here to our next stop, you can cut through the mountains and take a bit of a shortcut, but the road gets a little rough. So, we're going to head back down to Black Canyon Road and then make our way to Inscription Canyon.

[00:18:16]I always get asked what type of car you need to get out on some of these roads.

[00:18:21]And as far as this road goes, so far there have been some sections that have been a little sandy. So, I wouldn't try this road without at least having all-wheel drive. But other than that, it's been a fairly easy drive.

[00:18:38]So, I guess Aaron Lane, or at least the Chinese laborers he used, knew how to make a road.

[00:18:47]The worst part has been driving up to the opal mine.

[00:18:52]Those caves up on the hill, they were used as shelters by Native Americans. And it said inside you could still see the smoke stains on the ceilings.

[00:19:10]We should be almost at Inscription Canyon now. It should be just right around this bend.

[00:19:18]From the dry lake bed to here, we've only traveled about 17 miles.

[00:19:31]We are now at Inscription Canyon and they have this area fenced off to help protect it, to stop anyone from driving out into it.

[00:19:41]This area is on the National Register of Historic Places.

[00:19:46]And here's a sign about protecting this place. But unfortunately, as we'll see, not everyone's a good person.

[00:19:58]Earlier, I had mentioned that in the Black Mountain area as a whole, there are over 12,000 petetroglyphs.

[00:20:05]Over a thousand of those can be found in this canyon alone.

[00:20:13]You could see a few over here, but a lot of these rocks are covered by lyken.

[00:20:24]This canyon is the result of an ancient lava flow. And archaeologists believe this area was popular because the hard quartz found here is good for making tools.

[00:20:42]A lot of the petetroglyphs on this side are covered by lyken.

[00:20:46]I guess it's always possible that the Lykan somehow gained sentience and it made the petetroglyphs in an attempt to contact us, but probably not.

[00:21:00]No one knows for sure when these petetroglyphs were made, but the Black Mountain area is one of the oldest petetroglyph sites in the Mojave, or at least thought to be one of the oldest petetroglyph sites in the Mojave.

[00:21:13]As you can imagine, dating these carvings is pretty hard. Archaeologists could figure out that people were here as far back as 12,000 years ago. But how do you figure out when somebody carves something into a rock?

[00:21:28]You just can't be sure. Then again, I guess if they drew something like a giant sloth or a mammoth, then you know it's old.

[00:21:36]And here's one that is not a mammoth or a sloth. It looks like a sheep or a deer.

[00:21:48]Because there isn't as much lykan on the right side of the canyon, there are a lot more visible over here.

[00:21:57]And right over here, we have an unfortunate example of some of the destruction done to this place and why places like this need to be protected.

[00:22:07]Right here, this big horn sheep, you can see a red outline around it. Someone used paint or dye in order to take an impression of the petetroglyph, forever changing it and coloring it.

[00:22:20]Even worse, if you look right next to it, someone broke off a piece of the rock and took a petroglyph.

[00:22:34]This damage was actually done decades ago. This isn't recent damage. Hopefully these days people know better than to do something like this.

[00:22:48]It's amazing how many petetroglyphs are in this one small canyon. This was definitely a place that a lot of people were coming through.

[00:22:58]There was probably something special about this canyon.

[00:23:02]And it doesn't look like we're alone out here. I just saw a Chuck Walla on the rocks looking at us.

[00:23:12]There he is right there.

[00:23:15]It's just checking us out, seeing what we're doing.

[00:23:20]Oh, and there it goes.

[00:23:23]Oh, he's doing push-ups. Lizards do that to show dominance. So, I'm going to go ahead and keep walking down the canyon and let him think he scared me off.

[00:23:42]We can't say for sure when these petetroglyphs were created, but one thing's for certain, this wasn't a one-time event. This canyon was used again and again, generation after generation, leaving behind a record that spans thousands of years.

[00:24:01]And this one over here looks like a teacettle.

[00:24:24]It looks like a small cave here.

[00:24:29]And right over here, this has to be the coolest petetroglyph I've seen so far.

[00:24:35]It looks like a desert tortoise or I guess kind of a combination tortoise man.

[00:24:43]And there are groups of the three circles next to it. I see these three circles all across the southwest.

[00:24:57]I think if I could travel back in time and learn only what one of the symbols out here means, I would choose the three circles because I see it so often.

[00:25:07]At one point, people all across the Southwest knew that symbol, and now we have no idea what it is.

[00:25:15]And there's a spiral on this rock. It's generally believed that that meant water.

[00:25:28]And this looks like rivers flowing. This might have been a map or something right here.

[00:25:34]Centuries ago, this area was wetter than it is now, and it was home to the ancestors of the Vanu, the Mojave, and the Chimi peoples.

[00:25:47]There are a few more petetroglyphs up there, but beyond this point, it's pretty much just open desert.

[00:26:02]And here's a look back at Inscription Canyon.

[00:26:12]And that's our look at the Black Mountain Wilderness and our drive through Black Canyon. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the video, please give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing, and we'll see you next week.