Sloan Canyon, our third hike near Las Vegas, is home to the Sloan Canyon Petroglyph Site, a large collection of Native American petroglyphs. This site is within the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area just south of Henderson, Nevada. It used to require lots of gravel driving to reach it until the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) built a paved access road from Henderson and installed a visitor contact station (which was closed thanks to the shutdown 
).
We started from the Petroglyph Canyon Trailhead (after walking up the gated access road), went up the 100 Trail into the North McCullough Wilderness, then over two small dry waterfalls. The petroglyphs are concentrated in an area just past the second waterfall, so we could see a lot of them with minimal wandering around. This “rock art” was created by chipping-off the dark desert varnish (or patina) on the surface of the rock to expose the lighter rock underneath. It’s fun to speculate as to what they truly meant (or mean) but that’s really not for us to know. After enjoying the petroglyphs, we looped back via the 200 Trail, which gave us a view out over the seemingly ever-growing Las Vegas (now with a smog layer 🙄 ). This was an easy, fun hike (6.8 miles return) to a fascinating collection of petroglyphs. Kudos to the BLM for managing access to this important cultural site! 😀
BOOTS on the TRAIL 
Thanks! We were always curious about that Allegiant flight. As long as you don’t sign on for too many extras, it’s an economical way to do some desert hiking.
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Thought you might have been out of town and hiking since we didn’t see any recent posts. Beautiful area, as the desert has a unique beauty all it’s own. Really liked the Red Sandstone hike and the landscape. Welcome back !
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