This rock art panel in a remote area of Big Bend National Park was defaced on December 26/Robert Marks and Evelyn Billo, Rupestrian CyberServices

For perhaps thousands of years a rock art panel on the face of a boulder stood in a somewhat remote area of Big Bend National Park until two visitors, perhaps attracted to the area by social media posts, felt they had to scratch their names atop the curious petroglyph.

The vandalism is just the latest committed in the National Park System. Recent years have seen a New York woman leaving images in acrylic paints and markers in parks in the West, while who knows how many visitors to Zion National Park have etched their initials into sandstone walls. And then there was the individual who used a blue substance to coat rocks in Zion, possibly to create molds.

Some Zion National Park vandals used paint to leave their mark/NPS file

The New York woman, Casey Nocket, promoted her “work” on Instagram. She eventually was tracked down, charged, and pleaded guilty to defacing government property. She was sentenced to two years’ probation, 200 hours of community service, and banned from the National Park System during her probationary period.

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, vandalism seemed to spread through parts of the park system, as people longed to get outdoors and parks were either short of staff or even closed, something that didn't stop all from entering.

Back in 2018, romance was thought to have led to vandalism in Colorado National Monument, where graffiti -- "You're Perfect to Me", "I Promise to love You Forever + Always!", and "Prom...Ise?" -- was left on rocks.

In some of those instances, restoration specialists were able to either completely, or greatly, remove the paints or even sand off some graffiti. That's not the case at Big Bend, where "Issac, Ariel, Adrian, and Norma" left their names and the date, "12-26-21" on the panel.

Restoration specialists have been unable to remove all of the vandalism from the panel/NPS prior to the restoration efforts.

Big Bend staff were alerted to the damage by other park visitors. Restoration specialists did their best to remove the scratchings, but much of the damage is considered permanent.

The boulder stands in the "Indian Head" area of the park, which contains "abundant rock art, shelters, etc.," said Tom Vandenberg, the park's chief of interpretation and education. "It has been used by various groups of people for thousands of years, including groups from interior Mexico."

While the park does not promote that area in an effort to protect the resources, "social media has 'discovered' it in earnest over the last few years," Vandenberg said Wednesday in an email.

According to Tom Alex, the park's retired archaeologist, the panel in question reflected an example of the "Pecked Abstract Tradition," which is considered to date to the Archaic period.

"The style and motifs in it vary over the wide area from the Great Plains to the Desert Southwest and including the Big Bend. Even on the Indian Head site, abstract petroglyphs were produced over a long span of time, as evidenced by the varying degree of patination between older, more heavily weathered and repatinated to the more recent Archaic that superimpose the older figures and are less weathered and patinated," notes Alex, who has been working on a resource report for the Indian Head site.

"These figures range from Early Archaic (8,500 to 4,500 years before present) to Middle Archaic (4,500 to 3,000 years before present)," the archaeologist wrote. "The transition from abstract style to the more representational style occurred in the Late Archaic (3,000 to 1,300 YBP) and Late Prehistoric (1,300 to 470 YBP)."

Anyone with information about these incidents, or the persons involved, should contact the Big Bend National Park Communication Center at 432-477-1187.