Title

ASA001-387

Creator

Charles Clayton Howe

Preview

Creation Date

1950

Description

BLACK CANYON AND INSCRIPTION CANYON (SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA), 1949-1968 AND UNDATED (BULK DATES 1949-1958)

338 negatives: ASA001-364 – 701

Box 2. Box 6: 26 degraded negatives ASA001-408, 412, 427, 431, 434, 435, 436, 442, 443, 453, 468, 469, 471, 472, 473, 475, 512, 514, 515, 516, 532, 553, 556, 561, 626, 670

Twenty-seven sub-series in chronological order

Howe led many ASA trips to Black Canyon and Inscription Canyon, a small arroyo at the north end of Black Canyon (Pederson, 1956/1984; Howe, 1980). He found the bird petroglyph that ASA adopted as its logo; the bird is about 20 feet above the road and has a wing-span of over two feet (Pederson, 1953/1983). The petroglyph is unique in the area although a similar bird petroglyph occurs 120 miles away (Haenszel, 1972/n.d.). In 1953, the ASA posted a sign, “This is Black Canyon,” telling visitors about the canyon and asking them to “live in peace with this extraordinary place” (ASA, 1953/1984).

Charles LaMonk donated several of his reproductions of petroglyphs in Inscription Canyon to ASA (ASA LaMonk Nos. 9, 10, 14, 35, 38, 40, 69, 77 prepared in 1954 and ASA LaMonk no. 46 prepared in 1964).

Photographs include some taken in Inscription Canyon. This collection has no photographs of the ASA trip in June 1966 to attempt to repair damage by vandals (Howe, 1966).

Black Canyon, 1950

16 negatives: ASA001-387 – 402

Howe took this trip with Grover Reeder. ASA001-394 was published in ASA Bulletin (Blast from the past no. 3). The group of sheep with a “newborn” lamb (ASA001-389) may be conflation of man and sheep as seen by a shaman during a trance (Whitley, 1996). It has since been vandalized leaving only one-and-a half of the original ten sheep (Whitley, 1996).

Joshua Tree

Rights

The images in this collection are copyrighted. Images may be displayed, copied, or used for personal study only. Written permission to reproduce an image for electronic or print publication may be obtained from California State University San Bernardino's Pfau Library Special Collections.