The Rainbow Canyon drive is a 22-mile paved drive between the towns of Caliente, NV and Elgin, NV.  It’s an amazingly beautiful drive…fresh flowing river (Meadow Valley), lush greenery with plenty of wildflowers, and breath-taking mountains.  The mountains rise about 3,000′ above the road and in some spaces are almost near-vertical, tightly following the winding road.  All along the drive there are great places to get off-road and explore the historic and prehistoric traces of our past.  There are several sites containing petroglyphs and pictographs.  And, bring your hiking boots and camping gear, as you could backpack and camp in nearly endless side canyons.

The town of Caliente is a great jumping off point and is a wonderful small town (population of about 1,100).  At the southern end of Rainbow Canyon is Elgin, which contains a historic school house.  In between are several great state parks and the Etna caves.  Once you’re at Elgin, you can go east on Kane Springs Rd (about 40 miles of off-road), which cuts through two mountain ranges: Delamar Mountain range to the north and Meadow Valley range to the south.

Please click to enlarge (NOTE- there is a 2nd gallery with enhanced pictures, below this gallery):

Jon Harman, Ph D, developed a program called DStretch to help digitally enhance faded pictographs.  The gallery below include enhanced pictures using DStretch: