There is a certain kind of carved panel that seems designed to make a passerby stop. It presents signs in rows, some familiar, some difficult to place. A figure may resemble a hand, an animal, an eye, or a mark seen in a book about another country. The arrangement looks purposeful, perhaps even readable, yet no nearby plaque names a maker or gives a translation. A panel reported at Chloride Flat near Silver City belongs to a wider group that researchers call Western Message Petroglyphs. In popular accounts the same family may be called mystery glyphs. The mystery is real enough to investigate, but it is not permission to turn every mark into an arrow toward a hidden mine.
The most substantial published synthesis is Leigh Marymor’s 2023 study in Arts. It describes dozens of sites across western states, linked by repeated image forms, orderly rows, similar cutting technique, and locations associated with nineteenth-century travel and settlement. Its appendix table includes a Silver City site associated with the Chloride Flat Wagon Road, the Silver City, Deming and Pacific Railroad, the Red Hills Mine, and the town. A related earlier research chart expressly lists “Chloride Flat, Silver City, NM” and also a “Hat Top, Lordsburg, NM” entry. The sites are geographically separate; Hat Top is in the Lordsburg vicinity of Hidalgo County, whereas Chloride Flat is near Silver City in Grant County.
This is enough to identify a documented research question in the region. It is not enough to claim the Chloride Flat panel marks a cache, was carved by Spaniards, or tells the precise location of the Red Hills Mine. The table is a landscape association assembled by the researcher. A wagon road, railroad, mine, and town near a panel can help investigate when a maker could have visited. Proximity cannot reveal the meaning of a particular row of signs on its own. This article follows the evidence that can be checked and leaves the unresolved parts unresolved.
First, separate the several Chlorides
Southwest New Mexico has more than one place with “Chloride” in its name. Chloride Flat is associated with the Silver City silver district in Grant County. Chloride Canyon is near the ghost town of Chloride in Sierra County, farther east. A search result that mentions petroglyphs in “Chloride Canyon” may be about the latter place, not the Western Message panel near Silver City. A post about early silver mining at Chloride Flat may contain no information about rock art at all. Moving a photograph from one context to the other is an easy way to create a false local legend.
The Silver City mineral-district account on this site explains why Chloride Flat appears in mining history. Oxidized silver ores helped launch a district whose workings, roads, and later retellings still shape the landscape. Our Chloride Flat prospecting article follows the district records more closely. That mining setting matters to a historical panel because it gives potential travel corridors and date limits. It does not convert the rock into a mineral-rights document or a treasure sign. Site and mining records must be read separately before they are brought together.
The Lordsburg entry creates a second potential confusion. A panel called Hat Top near Lordsburg appears alongside Chloride Flat in comparative Western Message research. Similar imagery may link the panels within an artistic or communicative project, but it does not mean a person can follow an arrow between them, nor that they share a mining claim. Their inclusion in one table is evidence about the researcher’s grouping. It is not a field route. We have not found a land-manager guide inviting independent visits to either specific panel, so this article gives no precise coordinates or turn-by-turn directions.
What Western Message Petroglyphs look like
Marymor describes a recurrent format: figures engraved with metal-edged tools in one to several rows, sometimes with a mark set above or beside the main sequence. Many forms recur at multiple sites. That combination of ordered layout and repetition is why scholars take the engravings as a coherent corpus rather than a series of unrelated doodles. The shapes are not ordinary alphabetic words a visitor can simply sound out. They are images whose relationships may matter, and the meaning of those relationships is disputed.
In the 2023 synthesis, the known corpus contained 39 sites across eight states, with more than one engraved location at some sites. Those counts describe the state of research in that paper, not a permanent total. Each newly recognized panel can change the comparison. The author argues that metal-tool marks, repeated forms, and historical objects depicted in some examples place the group after European contact. That is a claim about the corpus. It does not automatically give the Chloride Flat rock an independently measured carving year. To date a particular panel more closely, researchers would need secure documentation, surface study, historical testimony, or a convincing link with datable images in its own composition.
The broad post-contact conclusion is stronger than a narrow attribution to one unknown traveler. An image of a rifle, house, horse, or other Euro-American item at some Western Message sites cannot have been carved by a person who never encountered that item. The apparent use of metal chisels also speaks to technique. But rock surfaces can be revisited. A late mark on one panel does not force every mark at every site to have been made on the same trip. Nor is an image borrowed from a printed book proof that the person who cut it held a particular job or ethnicity. Each step beyond the observed mark is an inference that should be named as such.
The strongest historical clue: borrowed images
Marymor’s central argument is that numerous signs correspond to images in nineteenth-century ethnographic publications. The paper describes forms drawn from Ojibwa picture-writing and Midewiwin material, Dakota winter counts and agency signatures, Shoshone imagery, sign gestures, and other sources, alongside a smaller set of symbols recognizable from cultures outside North America. The argument is not that all those communities jointly carved the western panels. It is that a historically situated creator or group may have gathered graphic material from printed collections and recombined it.
If a distinctive form can be matched to a specific published illustration, that can provide a terminus after which the later panel might have been made: the panel cannot have copied a publication before the publication existed. But the logic requires more than a generic resemblance. A simple eye, cross, or animal can be drawn independently many times. More persuasive evidence would be a cluster of unusual details recurring in the same way, a sequence of forms, and a documented print source available at the proposed time. Marymor uses this kind of pattern comparison to advance a late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century setting. Readers should distinguish that argument from a claim that any one symbol has been definitively translated.
The method also raises an ethical issue. A modern writer should not collapse distinct Native traditions into one invented “Indian code.” If a late historic author borrowed from ceremonial or documentary sources, the borrowing itself is part of the story. Those original images had contexts and meanings in their own communities. Their appearance in a new composite message does not transfer those meanings automatically, nor authorize us to present the new panel as an authentic ancient Indigenous text. At the same time, it would be premature to declare the precise identity and intentions of an unknown carver from the visual borrowing alone.
Where researchers disagree
The term “faux Indian picture-writing” in Marymor’s article states a strong interpretation of the corpus. Other researchers have examined different possibilities. John and Mavis Greer’s 2016 conference paper explored a Native American connection and explicitly described authorship and meaning as still elusive. Later analysis has proposed a central author, perhaps working with a small group, and identified repeated “phrases” across sites. Those ideas should be evaluated on their evidence rather than merged into a single settled story.
The disagreement is more useful than a dramatic claim that “nobody knows anything.” Researchers agree there is a recognizable group of panels with repeated formal traits. They can document where several were found, how images are arranged, and how they compare with historic visual sources. They differ over who made them and what the sequences communicate. An author who admits that range gives the reader a better puzzle: which observations are secure, which analogies are persuasive, and what new record could settle an attribution? A named traveler’s diary, a dated site photograph, a workshop note, or a firsthand oral account tied to a particular panel would be much stronger than a decoding chart published long after the carver died.
“Mystery” is a description of a research gap, not a separate historical period. It does not make the panels extraterrestrial, Egyptian colonies, or Spanish military dispatches. Some imagery in the wider corpus may resemble Egyptian or other global symbols because those images circulated in books and popular culture. A shared shape cannot establish that a person from the shape’s place of origin stood at Chloride Flat. The same rule applies to a swastika, an ankh, an eye, or a cross. Each has multiple contexts and histories. The composition and date matter more than a motif’s most sensational possible association.
Why the wagon road and mine matter, and where they stop
Marymor’s appendix lists several historic associations for the Silver City site: Chloride Flat Wagon Road, a later railroad connection, Red Hills Mine, and the town. The proposed pattern across the Western Message corpus is that panels often look over or lie near trails, rails, towns, mines, or quarries of the western expansion era. If the pattern holds, it suggests the maker chose places connected to movement and work. It can help narrow a search for historical people whose routes overlapped multiple sites. It can also explain how an otherwise isolated rock would have been encountered.
There are limits. Old route alignments can be hard to reconstruct. A wagon road may have changed course, and rail names changed with ownership. A mine might have several workings and years of activity. The presence of all four features on a broad map may make the area a plausible setting without proving the panel directly served any of them. The researcher’s table is a starting hypothesis for further archival work. It is not a land survey or a recovered instruction left by the carver.
Consider three claims a visitor might make after seeing a carved arrow-like figure. “The mark points toward a mine” is a visual hypothesis. “The maker intended it to point toward Red Hills Mine” requires a dated carving, orientation evidence, and a documented link. “Treasure is buried where the arrow points” requires independent evidence of a deposit and permission to investigate; it is not established by either the rock image or the area’s mining history. Moving from one sentence to the next without new evidence is how a local historical question becomes a confident but unsupported treasure story.
The same discipline applies to crosses and other popular “Spanish signs.” A cross can be religious, commemorative, directional, a copied printed form, a claim mark, or something else depending on context. The treasure symbols hub and its Spanish treasure symbols investigation ask for documents rather than shape dictionaries. At Chloride Flat, the published comparative record points primarily toward the Western Message corpus. Nothing in the sources cited here establishes a Spanish cache code at this panel.
A small historical investigation a reader can follow
One need not go to a fragile site to test a serious question. Begin by recording exactly what a paper states: site name, date of publication, number of panels, and which claims are the author’s interpretation. The 2023 Arts study has tables and appendices that can be compared with its narrative. Then examine the older Western Message work it cites. A claim of shared authorship should rest on repeated, relatively uncommon combinations, not one universal symbol. A claim about the railroad should be checked against local rail history. A claim about a mine should identify which working and which years.
Next separate the two New Mexico entries. The Silver City/Chloride Flat setting and the Lordsburg/Hat Top setting occupy different districts and counties. The research may group their images, but that connection is about a proposed corpus. A reader can ask whether the same unusual forms recur at both, whether their arrangements are similar, and whether historical travel between the districts was plausible in the suggested period. The question is stronger when stated without presuming a route or a single named author. The best evidence may turn out to be a dated image, a newspaper mention, or an archived field record rather than a fresh hunt for a rock.
Finally, compare proposed interpretations with chronology. A reading that requires a seventeenth-century Spanish author must explain the panel’s relationship to nineteenth-century print imagery and tools if those details are present. A reading that assigns every sign to an ancient Mimbres maker must confront the wider corpus’s post-contact images. Marymor’s own proposal must still explain variation among sites and identify the person or community behind the work. Serious historical questions have to survive the strongest contrary evidence. That is what makes the mystery worth following.
Protection and access
The panel’s inclusion in a scholarly corpus does not mean it is a developed visitor attraction. We have not found a current land-manager page that directs the public along a signed path to the Chloride Flat Western Message site or the Hat Top panel. The surrounding mining district contains a patchwork of private property, claims, disturbed ground, and possible hazards. Rock-art sites are protected cultural resources. This article identifies the area and sources but does not supply coordinates, a route from the road, or instructions to search for the carved surface.
What a genuine new discovery would require
Suppose a reader encounters an unfamiliar row of neatly cut figures elsewhere in the Southwest. Its resemblance to the Western Message format would be interesting, but declaring it another member of the corpus requires documentation. Photograph the composition without touching it, include the wider rock and surrounding landform, record the date and general area for the responsible land manager, and keep the exact location out of a public post until the place can be assessed. Weathering, tool traces, and nearby historic features may help a qualified researcher decide whether the panel is old, recent, or a mixture. A modern imitation can look persuasive in a close crop.
The next comparison would be more demanding than matching one eye or hand. Does the panel use several uncommon forms already recorded in the corpus? Are they arranged in rows with similar spacing and framing? Does a pair of signs recur together at other sites? Marymor’s work argues from repeated vocabulary and combinations; it does not treat a single familiar motif as decisive. A newly found image might also be a wholly separate Indigenous, settler, or contemporary work. Its history should be investigated in its own setting before it is drawn into a story spanning eight states.
The greatest gain from a new panel might be a date clue. An inscription with a documented historical name, a securely dated photograph, or an unusual image copied from a publication whose first printing is known could constrain when the work was made. None is perfect. Names can be repeated, photos can be mislabeled, and editions can reuse earlier illustrations. Yet a chain of independent clues is more reliable than a confident reading of an isolated shape. If a researcher can show the panel, the source image, and the historical route together, the author question becomes more tractable.
Even a discovery that overturns a favored theory would be valuable. A securely dated panel earlier than a supposed source book would weaken a copying claim; a documented maker from a Native community would change the debate about authorship; evidence of different hands at one site would complicate a single-author model. That is how a good mystery stays alive: each new fact has permission to change the explanation. A predetermined answer about lost Spanish gold has no such discipline, because every new sign can be made to point toward the desired ending.
If a museum, land manager, or qualified local group offers a permitted visit, follow its guidance. Do not chalk, wet, trace, rub, cast, or touch a sign to make it easier to photograph. Do not remove loose rock or scrape lichen. A new engraving beside an old one destroys part of the evidence researchers need to separate the original work from later additions. If a site is being damaged, report it to the relevant manager rather than posting a pin that may draw more traffic. A published photograph and the original study are good ways to learn without adding wear to the panel.
Even the name “petroglyph” is broad enough to cover work made in many centuries for very different reasons. The likely historic character of the Western Message group does not make its panels disposable. They may preserve the rare material trace of a puzzling project whose authorship has not been fully recovered. Protecting the stone gives future researchers a chance to inspect tool marks, surface weathering, and composition with better methods and better collaboration. A treasure hunt that damages it would trade a real historical source for an imagined one.
The mystery that remains
The Chloride Flat story is strongest when it ends with a precise open question. A panel near Silver City has been grouped with other Western Message engravings. The group shows repeated image vocabulary and format; published research argues for a historic, post-contact project shaped by printed sources and western travel landscapes. The Silver City site is associated in that research with the Chloride Flat road, rail line, mine, and town. The exact individual or individuals who carved it and their intended message remain disputed or unproven in the sources reviewed here.
That is a fuller history than either “ancient code solved” or “random marks nobody can explain.” It gives a reader something to investigate: source images, dates, routes, authorship arguments, and the distinction between a motif and a translation. It also keeps Chloride Flat in its proper place, alongside but not confused with Grant County’s Indigenous rock-art landscapes or Sierra County’s similarly named Chloride Canyon. The stone can hold an unanswered question without becoming an invitation to dig.
Sources and research notes
- Leigh Marymor, “Western Message Petroglyphs: A Faux Indian Picture-Writing Project in the American West,” Arts 12 (2023): corpus, repeated formats, post-contact dating argument, and proposed historical context.
- PDF of Marymor’s 2023 article and appendices: Silver City table entry with the Chloride Flat road, railroad, mine, and town associations.
- Leigh and Amy Marymor, “Western Message Petroglyphs: Esoterica in the Wild West”: comparative table that explicitly names Chloride Flat and Hat Top among the researched sites.
- John and Mavis Greer, “Western Message Petroglyphs: The Native American Connection” (2016): an alternative research argument; its authors say authorship and meaning remain elusive.