Petroglyph National Monument preserves a seventeen-mile volcanic basalt escarpment on Albuquerque’s West Mesa, protecting roughly twenty-four thousand petroglyph images and hundreds of archaeological sites within a landscape formed by eruptions about two hundred thousand years ago. Carvers chipped through the rock’s dark desert varnish to reveal lighter stone, creating images that include animals, people, brands, crosses, and abstract forms. Some carvings date back as far as three thousand years, though most were made between about A.D. 1300 and the late seventeenth century by Ancestral Pueblo peoples and later early Spanish settlers. The area remains culturally important and has faced continuing conflicts over development, access, vandalism, and stewardship.