Gallery: Rock Art

By Thomas Robinson June 27, 2019

Water monsters were spirits who lived in the Columbia River and swept victims into the currents. This Indian rock art (petroglyph) was removed from the Big Eddy area before being lost under the backwater of the The Dalles Dam in 1957. It was photographed in 1974 while at the Winquatt Museum in The Dalles. This rock art is now located on Temani Pesh-wa Trail in Columbia Hills State Park (formerly Horsethief Lake State Park), on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge near The Dalles.

She Who Watches or "Tsagaglalal" pictograph along Columbia River in Klickitat County, Washington, October 1982. The photographer was told by a park Ranger at the time he took this photo, that in the late 1970s, a man on the Columbia river was in a boat was using a high-power rifle with a telescopic sight to shoot at this rock. The Ranger yelled at him and got him to stop, but the shooter got away and wasn't captured. After an incident in 1992 when vandals spray-painted over this rock, the site was secured and the rock covered to prevent any further damage. Photo by Steve Terrill.

This gallery features photographs of rock art. Several fine examples of rock art came out of the Celilo Falls area. In addition to artifacts found during early archeological digs in the Dalles, many visible pieces of rock art stood over the area until the flooding caused by the new Dalles Dam covered the area in water. Tsagaglala, the most famous example of rock art, still stands in her place over the Gorge and is available to see on tours.

Art, She Who Watches