Saturday, March 21, 2009 - City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM

Taylor Mountain Dawn, Site 12, City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM, March 21, 2009

Mystery circles at Finger-Ring Draw

Finger Ring scale drawing

Poking around the City of Rocks neighborhood in Google Earth I came across an array of what appear to be stone circles in Finger-Ring Draw, over the other side of Cook's Peak. What are they? At least I think they are made of stones. It's hard to tell in the image. Check them out on this Google Map.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=32.469038,-107.602587&spn=0.023534,0.038195&t=h&z=15

Googling Finger-Ring Draw or the nearby Cooks Spring Historic Site turns up nothing about them. Huh?

Scaling off the Google maps image I came up with this drawing. This thing is HUGE, over half a mile wide and over a mile long! The outer oval is about 2-3/4 miles around. The whole thing is surprisingly geometrically precise on uneven terrain. Even with surveying equipment it would take a fair bit of effort to lay out those circles and oval. Who built it? When? Why? Where can it be seen from? By whom? What does it mean?

Ah! A thought. The axis of the oval is aligned north/south - but is not quite perfectly aligned with the Google Maps north/south axis. Knowing the precession rate of the earth's magnetic pole and the alignment of Google Earth's map, could one estimate the date this thing was built? A closer look with Google Maps seems to show the axis aligning with Florida Peak to the south. And the circles built on fairly flat terrain where it probably isn't visible in alignment, except maybe from Florida Peak, 20 miles to the south.

Update

I'vre started gathering my research on these circles at What are those Circular Symbols drawn in the desert at Finger Ring Draw?.

Night camp

Site 12 - City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM

Verizon cell phone service - fairly good signal - best on west side of the park
Verizon EVDO service - faster than many places I've camped
Go to City of Rocks State Park website
Locate City of Rocks State Park on my Night Camps map
Check the weather here

Wind on the Gangplank

There was almost no soil in that part of the range - just twelve miles' breadth of rough pink rock. "As you go from Chicago west, soil diminishes in thickness and fertility, and when you get to the gangplank and up here on top of the Laramie Range there is virtually none," Love said. "It's had ten million years to develop, and there's none. Why? Wind - that's why. The wind blows away everything smaller than gravel."

Standing in that wind was like standing in river rapids. It was a wind embellished with gusts, but, over all, it was primordially steady: a consistent southwest wind, which had been blowing that way not just through human history but in every age since the creation of the mountains - a record written clearly in wind - scored rock. Trees were widely scattered up there and, where they existed, appeared to be rooted in the rock itself. Their crowns looked like umbrellas that had been turned inside out and were streaming off the trunks downwind. "Wind erosion has tremendous significance in this part of the Rocky Mountain region," Love said, "Even down in Laramie, the trees are tilted. Old-timers used to say that a Wyoming wind gauge was an anvil on a length of chain. When the land was surveyed, the surveyors couldn't keep their tripods steady. They had to work by night or near sunrise. People went insane because of the wind." His mother, in her 1905 journal, said that Old Hanley, passing by the Twin Creek school, would disrupt lessons by making some excuse to step inside and light his pipe. She also described a man who was evidently losing to the wind his struggle to build a cabin:

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