Ridgecrest is a city in Kern County, California, United States, along U.S. Route 395 in the Indian Wells Valley in northeastern Kern County, adjacent to the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. It was incorporated as a city in 1963. The population was 27,959 at the 2020 census, up slightly from 27,616 at the 2010 census, making it the third-largest city in Kern County.
A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs, estimated to be 20,000 years old are classified as protected monuments and have been added to the tentative list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. Petroglyphs are found worldwide, and are often associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek prefix petro-, from πέτρα petra meaning "stone", and γλύφω glýphō meaning "carve", and was originally coined in French as pétroglyphe.
Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS) China Lake is a large military installation in California that supports the research, testing and evaluation programs of the United States Navy. It is part of Navy Region Southwest under Commander, Navy Installations Command, and was originally known as Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS).
The Coso Volcanic Field is located in Inyo County, California, at the western edge of the Basin and Range geologic province and northern region of the Mojave Desert. The Fossil Falls are part of the Coso Field, created by the prehistoric Owens River. They are within the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake and northeast of Little Lake and U.S. Route 395.
The Coso Range of eastern California is located immediately south of Owens Lake, east of the Sierra Nevada, and west of the Argus Range. The southern part of the range lies in the restricted Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake and the northern part of the range is designated as the Coso Range Wilderness. The mountains include Coso Peak, at 8,160 feet (2,487 m) above sea level, as well as Silver Peak and Silver Mountain, both more than 7,400 ft (2,300 m) in height.
Red Rock Canyon State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of California which features scenic desert cliffs, buttes and spectacular rock formations. The park consists of approximately 27,000 acres (110 km2) within the Mojave Sector of the Tehachapi District of the California State Park System, and is located along State Highway 14 in Kern County, about 80 miles (129 km) east of Bakersfield and 25 miles (40 km) north of Mojave, where the southernmost tip of the Sierra Nevada converges with the El Paso Mountains.
Coso Hot Springs is a hot spring complex in the Coso Volcanic Field in the Mojave Desert of Inyo County, California. The Springs are on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Kawaiisu Nation are a tribe of indigenous people of California in the United States. The Kawaiisu Nation is the only treatied tribe in California, Ratified Treaty, 9 Stat. 984, Dec. 30, 1849. This Treaty with the Utah Confederation of tribal nations. They have never given up their territorial rights to any of their ancestral land to the United States. The Kawaiisu Nation had preexisting treaties with Spain and those were recognized by Mexico until 1849 when California was becoming a State.
The Timbisha are a Native American tribe federally recognized as the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. They are known as the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and are located in south central California, near the Nevada border. As of the 2010 Census the population of the Village was 124. The older members still speak the ancestral language, also called Timbisha.
The El Paso Mountains are located in the northern Mojave Desert, in central Southern California in the Western United States.
Great Mural Rock Art consists of prehistoric paintings of humans and other animals, often larger than life-size, on the walls and ceilings of natural rock shelters in the mountains of northern Baja California Sur and southern Baja California, Mexico. This group of monuments comprises the site Rock Paintings of Sierra de San Francisco, which is included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons are two principal landforms within which are found major accumulations of Paleo-Indian and/or Native American Petroglyphs, or rock art, by the Coso People located in the Coso Range Mountains of the northern Mojave Desert, and now within the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, near the towns of China Lake and Ridgecrest, California. Little Petroglyph Canyon contains 20,000 documented images, which surpasses in number for most other collections. Additionally, the archeological resources are remarkably undisturbed.
Martis is the name given by scientists to the group of Native Americans who lived in Northern California on both the eastern and western sides of the Sierra Nevada. The Martis complex lasted from 2000 BCE to 500 CE, during the Middle Archaic era. Evidence of Martis habitation has been found from Carson River and Reno, Nevada in the east to Auburn, California and Oroville, California in the west. The Martis name refers to the geographic region of Martis Creek which spans Nevada County, California and Placer County, California.
Maturango Museum is located in Ridgecrest, California. The museum is best known for the guided tours of the Coso Rock Art District located on China Lake Naval Weapons Station. The museum offers exhibits and displays featuring both the natural and the cultural history and diversity of the Northern Mojave Desert with exhibits of animals, plants, rocks and minerals, Native American artifacts, and contemporary arts and crafts.
Archeological Site CA-INY-134, in Inyo County, California near Olancha, California, is an archeological site that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The site is located in the Coso Range 6 miles (9.7 km) northwest of Coso Hot Springs. It has also been known as Ayer's Rock Pictograph Site, as Bob Rabbit's Pictographs, as INY-134 and as INY-105. Prehistorically, it served as a camp and as a ceremonial site. The site includes three pictograph panels carved into a monolith. The pictographs are painted in a variety of colors and depict animal and human figures.
The Ridgecrest Petroglyph Festival is an annual weekend-long festival held in Ridgecrest, California, celebrating the Coso people, and specifically the 10,000-year-old petroglyphs of the Coso Rock Art District. The festival was founded in 2014, and attracted over 15,000 guests in its first year and was named one of Groupon's "10 Most Unique Autumn Festivals in the Country". Events include an intertribal powwow, street fair, and guided tours to the local petroglyphs.
Gold Butte National Monument is a United States national monument located in Clark County, Nevada, northeast of Las Vegas and south of Mesquite and Bunkerville. The monument protects nearly 300,000 acres of desert landscapes featuring a wide array of natural and cultural resources, including rock art, sandstone towers, and important wildlife habitat for species including the Mojave Desert tortoise, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion. The area also protects historic ranching and mining sites such as the ghost town of Gold Butte, although little but mine openings, cement foundations, and a few pieces of rusting equipment remains. The monument is managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Melon gravel are a geological deposit of mostly basalt boulders that were formed by the Lake Bonneville flood and deposited along the Snake River Plain in the western United States around 15,000 years ago. Melon gravel range in size from coarse sand to well over fifteen feet (4.6 m) in diameter, and generally appear rounded. Melon gravel were formed by the Bonneville Flood's intense erosion of the surrounding basalt flows of the area. This process also created several bars of melon gravel that, at their largest, can be one mile (1.6 km) long, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide, and 150 feet (46 m) deep.
