According to Richard McClure’s 1978 Archaeological Survey of Petroglyph and Pictograph Sites in Washington, there used to be a petroglyph beach boulder at the mouth of the Duwamish River along Seattle’s Elliott Bay. The boulder was buried or destroyed during the development of the waterfront.
Centuries hence, humanity will have to judge which culture was the wiser—the one that carved a harmless figure into a boulder on a beach or the one that bulldozed the entire beach to make way for commerce.
Today, the only remaining petroglyphs anywhere in King County are three figures carved into a sandstone boulder along the banks of the Green River near Auburn.
This stretch of the Green River lies within Flaming Geyser State Park, so named for a methane geyser whose output is so pure it stays burning once lit. Naively, I thought I could launch a kayak from the parking area and paddle upstream to the petroglyph site.
Route map. The launch at Flaming Geyser is popular with the inner-tubing crowd.
The Green River was beautiful, but it was too shallow and too fast for upstream travel. Every hundred yards or so, the boat would bottom out on the rocks, or else the current would accelerate so fast the boat couldn’t be paddled against it.
Time and again, I got out and lined or portaged across the impassable sections, but eventually I reached a rapid so long and wide there was no way around or through it. I returned to the launch point in defeat, having made only a third of the distance to the petroglyph.
Launch point on the Green River. The current started off strong and only grew stronger farther upstream.
Kayaking up the Green River through thick wildfire smoke. Washington’s 2020 wildfire season was the worst since 2015, which was the worst in Washington State history.
Paddling back down Green River toward launch point. My kayak’s fiberglass hull suffered greatly from the shallow, stony bottom.
Fortunately, State Parks had carved a trail along the riverbank that led to the petroglyph. Following McClure’s description, I easily found the prominent sandstone boulder protruding into the river from the south shore.
The Green River petroglyph consists of three figures: a fish, an unidentifiable quadruped, and an anthropomorph with a pair of projections from the head that resemble horns.
The Green River petroglyph does not resemble any other anywhere else in Washington. The Green River is part of the Muckleshoot Tribe’s usual and accustomed fishing and hunting area, so it is tempting to speculate their ancestors may have carved the petroglyph. However there are no other surviving petroglyphs from the Muckleshoot cultural area against which to compare the Green River petroglyph. Both the petroglyph at Elliott Bay described by McClure and a different one in Tacoma described by Beth and Ray Hill were buried by construction.
There are several surviving petroglyphs from the Nisqually and Squaxin Island cultural area, which is geographically and culturally close to the Muckleshoot. These surviving petroglyphs consist of stylized human faces (similar to the ones I found at Agate Point and Case Inlet). They bear no resemblance to the Green River petroglyph.
According to a 1978 monograph by McClure describing the discovery of the Green River petroglyph, the nearest surviving examples of horned anthropomorphs appear in petroglyphs from the Columbia River and Snake River areas, nowhere near the Green River and separated from it by mountain ranges. Even these distant examples of horned anthropomorphs do not resemble the one at Green River, so it may be unwise to posit a connection between them. Indeed, the Green River petroglyph may not be an indigenous carving at all.
Even the age of the Green River petroglyph cannot be guessed at. As is so often the case with petroglyphs, our ignorance of the Green River petroglyph outweighs our knowledge.
Green River petroglyph. The petroglyph is higher than head height on the boulder.
Head-on view of the Green River petroglyph. My wife, Rachel, sees a face in the overall shape of the three carvings.
I hiked out through the forest, lost in thought about long-ago people and their cultures. Near the parking lot was the flaming geyser for which the park is named.
According to signage, the flames of the geyser used to flare seven or eight feet high. The spectacle proved irresistible to our local yobbos, who dynamited the geyser, damaging it and reducing its output. Today, the geyser is a mere pilot light compared to its former glory.
State Parks’s website says the geyser no longer burns, due to the “depletion of its methane source,” but when I arrived, a flame was burning nicely.
Flaming geyser. As if the Earth itself were a giant Bunsen burner.
A visit to the Green River petroglyph may be more suitable as a hiking trip than a kayaking trip, but it was an equal pleasure to be out on the water as out in the woods.
—Alex Sidles