Hikes at Gold Butte National Monument | Outdoor Nevada Presents Tales from the Trails
SEASON 1: EPISODE 7 | 11/3/2023
The Gold Butte National Monument is less than two hours from Las Vegas. It’s a popular location for Off-Highway-Vehicles or OHV recreation and it also has great hiking trails. The access road is nine miles from Mesquite.
Gold Butte National Monument is almost 300,000 acres with more than 300 miles of primitive routes. Within this rugged terrain, there is a variety of prehistoric, historic, geological and biological wonders.
From the rock stories carved by ancient indigenous people to the remnants of mining and ranching, this area tells the story of human life in Southern Nevada over thousands of years.
Jennifer Durk is an archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management. She said the area is known as the Falling Man Archaeology Complex because of the dozens of petroglyphs that are found carved into the rocks, including one that looks like a man who is falling.
She said archaeologists believe the area was occupied by ancestral puebloans that lived in the area from around 4,500 BC with a larger population around 2,500 BC. The site is sacred to Nevada’s indigenous people.
The trail to see the Falling Man petroglyph starts easy but becomes a rock scramble and a more difficult climb quickly. Maria describes the hike as moderate to a touch difficult, but worth it when hikers reach the Falling Man.
Durk explained that the tribes have asked that no pictures or videos of petroglyphs that are shaped like humans be taken. The Tales from the Trails crew didn’t take any video of the ancient artifact out of respect for the wishes of the indigenous people.
Archaeologists estimate the Falling Man petroglyph was created about 4,500 BC but that is just a good guess, because they really don’t know.
A nearby trail is the Newspaper Rock Trail. It is on the backside of the canyon from Falling Man. The trail is narrow and rocky, but it leads to a breathtaking petroglyph known as Newspaper Rock.
Durk said it is difficult to know the story that is being told by the images or what each of the etchings mean but it is not difficult to pick out pictures that look like bighorn sheep. She said the basket-like figures may be cradleboards, which were used to carry babies.
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