Dateland, AZ (2/24/2020)

Dateland was founded around 1920 as a water stop for trains on their way to San Diego.  Visitors often swam in the irrigation pond to cool off, since the area gets temps at or near 120F for three weeks each summer.  This was once a big farming area, but most of it has long since disappeared.  Solar farms are now the big thing, although dates are still the main attraction.  The Travel Center is also the date farm and advertises date products far and wide, especially date shakes.  The population is said to be around 800, but I have not seen places for that many people unless you count the snowbirds in the two RV parks.

So why am I here?  I don't like dates and the weather isn't hot, recently ranging from 50F to 72F, which is pretty perfect from my point of view.  Also, I'm not a fan of solar farms, which I think are ugly and somewhat inefficient and exist only because taxpayers carry around 30% of their cost.  Two years ago, I breezed right by  this place without even noticing it was here.  However, I later learned of some rock art sites along the Gila River and Dateland has the closest RV park.  So here I am.

The Travel Center, with its date palms, is a true oasis in the desert.

The Oasis RV Park, where I'm staying, is another oasis, and the folks who run it are very nice.  Many of the people who stay here come back year after year.  My neighbors, from Calgary, Alberta, have been coming here for more than thirty years.  Many of the sites are set up to be permanent, with flower gardens, bird feeders, etc.  The park itself presents a great image.

Aside from the Travel Center, most of the local "attractions" involve what used to be.  You can see the old shrimp ponds, or the old brothel now falling down, or the Oatman Massacre site, or any number of abandoned homes and cabins.

I learned of three rock art (petroglyph) sites along the Gila River, now a dry river bed here due to diversion and dams upstream.  Unfortunately, I only had directions to Sears Point, but hoped the locals knew how to get to Quail Point and Hummingbird Point.  No luck there, as no one I spoke to had even heard of those two sites. (I'll probably get something on them soon after I leave here.)

Sears Point is about nine miles up a dirt road that crosses the dry riverbed and is described as "impassable when wet".  An inch of rain two nights earlier might have left it wet, but I went anyway.  Along the way, I passed some signs commemorating General Patton's two training camps in  World War II.

This area was also used for training B-25 pilots in WW II, and the runways can still be seen.  Soldiers also came here to train for the desert conditions found in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I passed a couple of "houses" apparently still in use, and several sites where RVs were parked.  It frequently amazes me how far into the desert some people will go to get privacy.

The road was actually pretty good for three or four miles, then got a little "dipsy-doodle" as it went through several washouts.  No big deal.  The dry riverbed was no problem, but then pools of water/mud started appearing in the road.  There were bypasses in several spots, but then I saw a long bad muddy area up ahead, with trees lining the ruts.  I saw one set of tracks going off into the desert to avoid the mud, so I followed them.  This path also proved to be soft and muddy, so I went into 4Low and found my way back to the main trail just before it ended at Sears Point.

There are several buttes at Sears Point, all formed by huge piles of volcanic boulders.  I started to climb the nearest butte and began seeing petroglyphs right away. 

There was no trail up the steep, rocky hillside, so I just picked my way among boulders large and small, taking photos of the petroglyphs along the way.  At the top there were great views of the buttes and the desert below, all the way to distant mountains.

As usual, going down was trickier than climbing up the rocky slope, and my legs were shot by the time I was down.  I still had enough energy to walk around some of the buttes, but not enough to climb another one.  Consequently, I probably missed hundreds, if not thousands, of petroglyphs.  No matter, I still saw a great many, and some much different than other locations.  Here are a few of the more interesting panels, all shot from ground level with a long lens.

Returning to the interstate, I took the main trail and simply powered through the really muddy spots.  I was a little concerned about the possibility of getting stuck out here, since the trail register showed the last visitor was two days earlier, but the LRJ came through for me again, although some of it was skidding sideways in the bog.  Now it's covered with red mud and looks like a Jeep again.