Samuelson Rocks

Samuelson Rocks is a low, rocky hill west of Quail Springs, scattered with boulders carved with John Samuelson’s political and philosophical messages. It’s a good detour if you like the small traces of the park’s homestead history; the visit is about finding the writing, not following a formal trail. There is no designated path, and published approaches range from about 2.4 to 5 miles round trip. Pick your route before you set out and save it offline: visitors repeatedly report that it is easy to lose the way in the washes, and phone reception can be patchy. There’s no shade, so avoid making this a hot-weather walk.

The inscriptions are scattered across the mound rather than gathered at one obvious stop, so allow time to look around the different boulder faces. They’re cut into the rocks’ dark outer surface, and the words range from personal beliefs to comments on politics, religion, work, and everyday life. For a photo, step back enough to include a lettered face and the open Joshua tree desert behind it; that shows both the writing and the lonely setting.

Samuelson was a Swedish immigrant who arrived in the area in 1926, worked for Bill Keys at a gold mine, and lived with his wife near Quail Springs by 1927. One inscription bears his name and that year. Writer Erle Stanley Gardner met him in 1928 and later published an extraordinary account of his life, but the history around that story is disputed. The inscriptions are the firmer record: some take on the politics of the day, including Herbert Hoover and Judge Ben Lindsey.