WOW: Castle Gardens Is A Beautiful Piece Of Wyoming History
There's no doubt that Wyoming is full of history and if you're bored with the scenery, drive for 15 minutes, and the scenery will change. I feel sorry for the people that have never visited the 44th state, they really don't know what they're missing.
The history of Wyoming is strong in many different areas, for example:
- Multiple National Parks/ Monuments / Forests including the nation's first National Park
- Top 10 largest Indian Reservations in the Country (Wind River)
- Rich Lands
- Dinosaurs
- Museums
- Cheyenne Frontier Days
Those are just few of the extraordinary historical credits that the Cowboy State offers.
Exploring Wyoming doesn't stop at Yellowstone or Devil's Tower, the whole state shares in the excitement of history.
Over the last year I've been exploring as much of the state as possible, and this weekend, I was blown away by the Castle Gardens Petroglyph site.
Petroglyph is an image that's made by chiseling, picking and carving a rock to create the rock art. The petroglyphs are symbols that show us a little of what the societies, religions and nature of surrounding tribes. The sites were, and still are, the sites of traditional ceremonies happen.
This site is one of the few sites for petroglyph in Wyoming and is well taken care of by the Bureau Of Land Management. The groomed parking lot and path around the 13 separate rock art locations.
On the path you'll find:
- Plants
- Geology
- Graffiti
- Gateway
- Elk Emergence
- Bear Emergent
- Turtle
- Bear Medicine
- Fertility
- Techniques
- Thunderbird
- Decay
- Heraldry
The historic art that is chiseled in stone is said to be from between 1300 and 1550 A.D. by Native Americans. It's said that groups of Plains Indians have close ties to the site and Arapaho refer to Castle Gardens as 'Houu Neci' or 'Holy Water'.
Although, because we can't have anything nice, there are places that have more recent markings and drawings, but the legit historic art has fencing up to protect it.
To get here, it's between Casper and Riverton off WY 20/26 (78 miles). Just before Moneta you turn left and go 19 miles on Castle Garden Rd. Another left for 5 miles on BLM road to Castle Garden.