About a half mile east of Tamarisk Grove Camp­ground, look­ing south from State High­way 78 is the west­ern edge of the Mescal Baja­da. a three mile wide desert delta that, in the best of sum­mer storms, car­ries a tor­rent of water into San Felipe Creek.  After a few drench­ings from late sum­mer thun­der­storms, a for­est of dark green ocotil­lo comes splash­ing across the baja­da.  In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, 2014, trop­i­cal storm Nor­bert left an explo­sion of the most col­or­ful false spring in this val­ley, locat­ed between Tamarisk Grove Camp­ground to the west and the Nar­rows to the east, both about three miles dis­tant. We found the twin entrance roads along the south edge of the 78 to Mine Wash Road (see lat/long below because you can eas­i­ly zip past it), and fol­low­ing the gen­tle, mean­der­ing climb up the baja­da we reached the ancient Kwaymii vil­lage site at rough­ly 2.2 miles from the high­way. This sea­son, a 4‑wheel dri­ve vehi­cle was essen­tial, along with a suit­able ground clear­ance to avoid sev­er­al areas where rock has been exposed by ero­sion in the road dur­ing the thunderstorms.

The road up Mine Wash runs just west of the pri­mary vil­lage area, although evi­dence of his­tor­i­cal occu­pa­tion radi­ates to the south west and south­east many hun­dreds of feet.

Thun­der­heads and Chol­la
(click pho­to for full size)

The kiosk at the entry trail is locat­ed at geo­graph­ic coor­di­nates  Lat­i­tude: N 33 06’ 46.2”, Lon­gi­tude: W 116 20’ 42.4”

Don’t miss the turn-in from State High­way 78 at Lat­i­tude: N 33° 07′ 58.6″, Lon­gi­tude W 116° 20′ 02.3″ at 2.75 miles east of turnoff at Yaqui Springs Campground.

Links: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=24488 for “Abo­rig­i­nal Set­tle­ment in Mine Wash, Anza Bor­rego Desert State Park.” Is a dis­cus­sion of CA-SDI-813.

Click on pho­to left or below for max­i­mum image size.

Pho­tos by Bar­bara Swan­son unless noted

Morteros after a thun­der­storm
(click pho­to for full size)