About "American West"

The West has long captivated the imagination of many people. Images of the old West reveal wide open spaces, spectacular rock formations, mountains and canyons, the cowboy life, Native American cultures, and struggles for limited natural resources and land.

Although a great amount of history is preserved in photographs, stories, legends, museums, and ghost towns, much of the heritage of the old West continues today.

Because of my own distant heritage, I am particularly drawn to the history of Native Americans who once occupied this land in great numbers. In the United States alone, Native American heritage sites exist from the Everglades to Alaska and Hawaii. Although many of these sites preserve physical evidence of past and current civilizations and culture (such as Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and the Montezuma Castle National Monument in Arizona to name just a few), other locations document sad historical facts such as the Cherokee Trail of Tears as well as monuments of many battles.

The existence of early inhabitants is also preserved in art and communications left behind in the form of petroglyphs and pictographs. Petroglyphs are images carved or scratched into stone. Pictographs, which are often found in caves and other areas where they are  protected from the elements, are paintings on stone using natural pigments. Although these important records of the past have survived for hundreds, and even thousands of years, they have not always been protected from vandals and thieves, or even repeated touching in a respectful manner.

The images in this gallery represent western heritage as it exists today along with glimpses into the past. Although I have a large collection of images taken of Native American petroglyphs and pictographs, I consider these the art of others that I have simply preserved in my own way.