Are you looking for an easy hike that all of the family can enjoy? Well I have one for you, The V Bar V Heritage Site. This Heritage Site is a little beyond the Beaver Creek campground with in the Coconino National Forest. The hike is about a half mile or less to the heritage location it self.  A trail leads about 100 yards from the parking area to a small visitor center and bookstore. An easy 10 to 15-minute walk takes you along Wet Beaver Creek, one of the perennially flowing tributaries of the Verde River. The area is lush with cottonwoods, sycamores and willows, and during the spring, blanketed with wildflowers. A pleasant stroll for sure.

Why V Bar V Heritage Site? Well it contains the largest known petroglyph site in the Verde Valley, which is known to contain more then a thousand petroglyph's. The images are an intriguing mix of humanoid figures, animals and geometric designs. A ranger or volunteer at the petroglyph site describes the markings and the people who made them. Theories abound, but no one really knows for sure what the markings mean to the people who pecked them into the rock so long ago. Native Americans can tell archaeologists what the symbols mean to their people today, but those meanings vary from one clan to the next and almost certainly have varied over time.

The petroglyph's probably were made from 1100 to 1400 AD. The site must have attracted people for centuries, it is idyllic location, nestled along the banks of Wet Beaver Creek. Archaeologists call the people the 'Southern Sinagua'. What they called themselves, no one knows. But the people who created these petroglyph's once lived in villages scattered from Wupatki, northeast of Flagstaff, to south of the Verde River. They flourished for centuries, until they abandoned their villages shortly after 1400. Some Sinagua drifted north and may have become ancestors of the modern Hopi people. For hundreds of years the site remained undisturbed untill archaeologists learn about the petroglyph's around 1945.

Trying to sort out the petroglyph imagery or interpret the symbols, fires the imagination. Standing at the site, your thoughts drift through the centuries, as you try to get closer to the thoughts of past people and their cultures. Some of the images are easy to identify: turtles, lizards, snakes and mammals such as antelope. Others are more inscrutable such as, humanoids and bear paws. Some patterns are particularly intriguing, geometric in design, consisting of circles, wavy lines, grids, spirals, round and square.

Some of the art work shows lines meandering between petroglyph's, suggesting, well who knows? No one knows for sure, although there are a number of theories: clan symbols, important rituals or events. It is also possible that the symbols served as an event calendar indicating the solstice, equinox or possibly when to plant crops. The images could also be signs to insure the abundance of game or rainfall. Or maybe maps indicating hunting sites, watering holes or possibly territorial markers. Your interpretation could be just as accurate as anyone else's.

Being at a prehistoric site is something akin to soaking in the solitude of the wilderness. It allows you a connection to something bigger then our selves. So leave the wild modern era behind and step into the past of Mother Natures Wonderland.