The Erasers

After we anchored the boat on Lake Powell’s rocky shore at the southwestern edge of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, the five of us trudged uphill across a vast expanse of sand and thorny shrubs under an unseasonally hot sun. Our destination on that October morning was Wahweap Window and an adjacent sandstone recess, two large alcoves that resemble the orbital cavities of a giant skull emerging from the soft earth.

The formation’s hardened layers were deposited eons ago and shaped by wind and water millions of years later, but what drew us there was the consequence of much more recent forces: graffiti. Etched into the rock of the smaller of the two caverns were countless names and dates, many of them overlapping each other. Not only was virtually every easily accessible surface covered, but enterprising vandals had likely used ladders or climbing equipment to reach spots 10 feet high or above. “Wow, there is a lot!” said Rich Doucette, a volunteer, as we scrambled inside.

We moved to Wahweap Window, so named because of a small opening in the back of it, and the graffiti there was even more extensive. The walls had been inscribed by generations of visitors, and we made a game of looking for the oldest dates. We found an “1887,” but was it authentic? A “104 B.C.” showed unequivocally that not all dates were. Alex Anderson, the park’s volunteer program coordinator, had not visited the Window before, so he snapped pictures of old-looking signatures, including an extremely dubious “John Powell,” the lake’s namesake.

Amid the numerous dates and names were elaborate drawings — here a shark, there an anguished face reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” I was of course horrified to witness such defacement in a national park site, but I found myself feeling a little bit of awe, too. It was clear some of the vandals had taken their task seriously. “Look at this one right here,” Doucette said. “The font is incredible.”

Our group had spent much of the previous day scrubbing off such engravings in another part of the park, but park archaeologists would have to review the graffiti inside the Window and the other alcove before removal could take place. I asked Jim Austin, a veteran graffiti fighter, how much work he thought it would take to clean up the site. “I’m thinking a hundred man-days,” he said. “This is probably the worst graffiti in the whole lake.”

When I first became aware of the existence of Glen Canyon’s Graffiti Removal and Intervention Team — known by the apt acronym GRIT — a few years ago, I wondered how much graffiti was out there and whether it was possible to remove it all in a park that includes 1.2 million acres of canyon country and some 2,000 miles of lake shoreline. In any case, I thought it’d be gratifying to help in some small way and fun to boat around the lake. I connected in May of last year with Anderson, and he agreed to let me join an upcoming trip.

I had trouble locating the diminutive National Park Service boat dock to the side of the sprawling Wahweap Marina, and when I got there, the rest of the crew was already busy loading gear onto the boat. I greeted Anderson and introduced myself to the others. I would learn more about each of them over the next three days, but it was immediately apparent that Austin, 69, sporting a yellow Glen Canyon volunteer shirt, a wide-brimmed, neck-flap hat and a worn-out orange life vest, was a regular. I gathered that Doucette, 26, and Elijah Succarotte, also 26, knew each other and were GRIT newbies like me.

Glen Canyon began organizing graffiti removal trips in 2004, the year after a couple of park lovers donated a 55-foot-long houseboat for that purpose. About a dozen times a year, groups of around eight volunteers would scrub graffiti by day, and come evening, the rechristened “True Grit” would anchor in a picturesque cove. “It was a sweet gig,” said Austin, who used to sleep on the deck under the stars.

The program ground to a halt with the onset of Covid. The aging True Grit needed extensive repairs, and the Park Service, lacking the funds and staff to make them, put the boat in dry storage. Anderson, 29, was hired in 2022, and GRIT trips resumed in 2023 on a Commander Ram, a much-smaller — but faster — motorboat.

National park sites regularly suffer from acts of vandalism, whether that’s spray-painting historic buildings at Gettysburg National Military Park, defacing petroglyphs at Big Bend National Park or carving hearts into aspens at Rocky Mountain National Park. Parks in urban settings are particularly vulnerable targets, but even though statistics are hard to come by, plenty of anecdotal evidence shows that the big parks of the Southwest have been hit hard, too.

The region’s sandstone, some of it covered with a dark patina known as desert varnish, makes for a seemingly infinite canvas, and the only tool one needs is a piece of rock. “It’s much easier to create a mark that is visible with not a whole lot of effort,” said Rachel Adler, an architectural conservator for the Park Service’s Vanishing Treasures program. Adler said that instances of graffiti possibly increased at the beginning of the pandemic, a time when many parks were not staffed but people continued visiting. Since a number of these parks are expansive and staffing levels have not kept up with the increasing numbers of visitors (and continue to drop as the current administration cuts jobs), it’s not difficult for graffiti artists to carve away without a ranger in sight. Adler said she is asked multiple times a year by area parks to provide graffiti remediation expertise. “It definitely is a big issue,” she said.

Some of the most damaging graffiti is done on top of ancient rock paintings and petroglyphs. In certain cases, archaeologists may decide to leave it in place rather than risk altering the original image further. “It’s not a victimless crime,” said Anastasia Walhovd, a preservation archaeologist at Archaeology Southwest and an enrolled member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. “It directly impacts Tribal communities, their sense of place and their heritage.”

In 2016, a centimeter-deep “Andersen” was carved into Frame Arch, a geological formation at Arches National Park that is culturally significant to area Tribes. Instead of damaging the arch even more by grinding off the inscription, park staff filled it in with rock and soil collected nearby mixed in with an acrylic binder. That’s why Adler uses the word “mitigation.” “Once something has been graffitied, it has been permanently altered,” she said, “and you can’t bring it back to the way it was before.”

Watch the video to see graffiti mitigation in action at Frame Arch in Arches National Park. NPS

Graffiti in a national park can lead to stiff fines and even prison time, but successfully prosecuting these crimes is a challenge as the perpetrators are rarely caught. Sometimes they are, though. After Casey Nocket drew faces with permanent markers and acrylic paint in seven Western national park sites in 2014, outraged internet sleuths identified her. She was eventually sentenced to a fine and 200 hours of community service and banned from park sites for two years.

The “see something, say something” approach is a major tool for graffiti prevention. Savehistory.org, a collaborative effort between archaeologists, Tribal partners and government agencies, set up a tip line to report vandalism, as well as the looting and trafficking of artifacts, and several states have established steward programs where volunteers visit archaeological sites regularly and notify land managers about graffiti and other violations. Sue Fritzke, a former superintendent of Capitol Reef National Park, said enlisting the help of volunteers and visitors is crucial. Once on a day off, she saw two young people jump over a fence and head toward a petroglyph panel, evidently intent on carving their names on it. “All of these visitors were there, and they started yelling at the kids,” Fritzke said. “I didn’t have to do anything.”

There was room in the boat for our packs, a 5-gallon jug of water, our tools and little else. Once we all had found a place to sit, Anderson dispensed mandatory safety instructions and set expectations for the trip. “There’s a lot of graffiti out there, guys,” he said. “We’re not gonna get it all.” Then Anderson backed the motorboat away from the dock, and we headed toward our graffiti-rich destination: Antelope Canyon.

Whenever the boat sped up and the engines roared, we sat in companionable silence, but during quieter intervals over the next three days, I would learn that Succarotte was an avid reader (he had brought “Walden” with him) who had spent time in a Buddhist monastery and that Doucette’s move from Philadelphia to the West, which he had made after borrowing the money for the plane ticket, was a chance for a fresh start. I also learned that Austin was a retired chemist from Phoenix who had been on more than 20 GRIT trips since 2008. “I just love this part of the world,” he said.

Part of Antelope Canyon can be accessed by boat, but much of it is a spectacular slot canyon that can be visited only on tours led by Navajo guides. We would work on a section of the canyon within the park, making sure to stay off Navajo land. As we approached the canyon’s mouth, Anderson slowed the boat, and we glided between the narrowing walls. High up on either side we could see Lake Powell’s famous “bathtub rings,” deposits left behind by mineral-rich waters. (Lake Powell’s water level varies some 20 to 60 feet seasonally — often rising with snowmelt in spring and early summer and dropping the rest of the year — and it has been on an overall downward trend from its 1983 high, in part because of a climate change-fueled drought.) When we couldn’t go any farther, Anderson dropped anchor. We disembarked, carried buckets of tools through the muck to the shore and started walking up canyon.

Soon, we came across graffiti, mostly names and hearts scrawled on the walls. Some looked so fresh they seemed to have been etched that day (and maybe they had been). Others had been scratched into sandstone so friable the perpetrators might have used their fingers.

The most extensive graffiti display was perhaps 100 feet long, and we decided to start our work there. Vandals occasionally use charcoal, paint or permanent markers, but most of the graffiti in the park is carved into the rock. Some of those etchings are so superficial that a squirt of water is sufficient to erase them, but others are so deep they can only be removed using all the tools in our arsenal. It’s crucial not to use a heavier hand than necessary, but the panel we were looking at would require the more intensive approach.

Austin gave us a quick tutorial on how to use our tool set — everyone’s bucket included gloves, safety glasses, a rag, a sponge, a spray bottle, a paint scraper, a couple of brushes, a hammer and a pair of earplugs. “This stuff looks like these scrapers will do a pretty good job,” he said. He scraped steadily at a large “J,” producing a small plume of rock dust. “With some good force like that and you’re basically now done.” He then moved on to a deeply carved “Jackie” and demonstrated how to gently tap the rock around the letters with the hammer before smoothing out the erased inscription. “Obviously, we want as little impact as possible,” he said, “but we definitely want the graffiti gone.”

We each picked a spot and got going. Anderson affixed a paint scraper to a pole to tackle graffiti a dozen feet above the canyon floor. Succarotte worked calmly and methodically, while Doucette chose those inscriptions that required a hammer to efface and banged away, his knuckles white from the effort. I zeroed in on a “C+R” heart and started scraping. Soon, sweat mixed with rock powder streamed down my face. Erasing graffiti sure seemed to require a lot more effort than creating it.

So why do some visitors deface national parks? Research into the motivations of those who carve their names over a rock art panel, for example, is nonexistent, said Aaron Wright, a preservation anthropologist who’s written about the challenge of protecting Southwest petroglyphs from vandalism. “They may not even know themselves,” he said. Adler, the Park Service archaeologist, finds it perplexing, but she wonders if some people simply want to leave a trace of their passage on Earth. “I don’t know if this idea of mortality gets into people’s heads, like, well, at least I can, you know, do something that will last,” she said.

It may last awhile, but sooner or later — at least in Glen Canyon — it likely will be expunged by a GRIT volunteer. One time, Austin found a name and 20 individual years carved into the rock, presumably corresponding to that person’s annual visits to Lake Powell. “There is nothing more pleasurable than erasing 20 years’ worth of graffiti,” he said with a smile. Several years ago, Austin had a unique opportunity to learn why someone had etched his name into one of the park’s canyons — because the perpetrator also carved his phone number. “I don’t remember his name,” Austin said. “Let’s say it’s Kevin.” Austin called him, and he answered. The exchange went something like this:

“Hey Kevin, I’m working with the Park Service down here at Glen Canyon, and I’m standing on a rock, and I’m looking at your name and phone number in this rock,” Austin said. “You wanna tell me why that’s there?”

Kevin stammered a bit.

“Well, I was with a bunch of people, and they were all doing it, so it was just a thing to do,” he said. He seemed ashamed, said Austin, who told Kevin that next time, he should tell his friends to find a better occupation.

Kevin’s explanation may not seem the most insightful, but it helps explain the park’s strategy when it comes to graffiti remediation and prevention. Leave a bunch of graffiti in place, and some visitors might think it’s OK to add their own. But if you remove graffiti from one area, would-be vandals tend to stay away. That’s one reason Wahweap Window’s cornucopia of graffiti still stands. Until the park can devote the necessary resources to remove it all, there is not much of a point in erasing only part of it.

Once we were done with our panel, we walked farther into the canyon, cleaning as we went, before turning around at a fork. When we passed the first batch we had cleaned, we took a second to admire it. “I think it looks good,” Austin said. “It looks natural.” The graffiti was gone, but in its place were large discolored splotches. Austin assured me that, with time, those would weather and blend in with the surrounding rock.

The canyon was now completely in the shade, and all but a handful of visitors had left. Just before we got back to the boat, Austin scrambled up the slickrock to reach one last patch of graffiti, high on a sandstone ledge. For a few minutes, his hammer blows echoed through the canyon, and then it was quiet again. For now, it seemed, Antelope Canyon was graffiti-free.

The park’s few marinas constitute islands of convenience in an otherwise unpopulated landscape of rock and water. Antelope Point, where we made a pit stop, claims to be home to the world’s largest floating restaurant, and the docks were filled with behemoth houseboats seemingly better proportioned for the high seas than a shrinking lake. Their names — “Sotally Tober” was one — gave an inkling of the party atmosphere many visitors seek when they come to Glen Canyon.

With daylight running out, we continued on and looked for a campsite, eventually settling on a windswept expanse framed by jagged peaks. It was a peculiar and disorienting place: It felt wild and mineral, yet it was crisscrossed with tire tracks, and we could see the twinkling lights of the marina and the city of Page across the lake. After securing our tents with piles of rock, we ate a quick dinner (canned tuna and canned corn for me), pondered whether one could see Saturn’s rings with a naked eye, and retired for the night. I was sound asleep in a matter of minutes.

After the morning trek to Wahweap Window and a quick stop at the marina for gas and muffins, we set out for Padre Bay, about an hour to the east. Anderson was interested in checking whether new graffiti had turned up in areas that had been cleaned recently. He also thought it would be interesting for us rookies to visit a site that looms large in GRIT history.

In 2006, a group of volunteers was working to erase graffiti that included a few Spanish words written in cursive. “Somebody was gonna take a hammer to it, and then another volunteer said, ‘Wait, wait!’” Anderson said. The phrase “Paso por aqui” (“passed by here”) was accompanied by an intriguing date: “Año 1776.” One of the volunteers quickly recognized that the inscription might be related to an 18th-century expedition from Santa Fe to California led by two Franciscan friars. Scientists later studied lichens on the rock, conducted chemical analyses of the patina and examined the calligraphy, and park officials concluded that the inscription was likely authentic.

We anchored in one of the larger coves of Padre Bay. The water was murky and covered in plant bits from a nearby stand of reeds, but I jumped in, eager to shed the sweat and, well, grit of the past couple of days. Anderson, Succarotte, Doucette and I then hiked up toward the Spanish graffiti. We followed a coyote through the narrow Gunsight Pass before scrambling past a sign warning potential graffiti artists of monetary and penitentiary consequences. The historical inscription, which was enclosed behind metal bars in 2016, was barely visible. I understood the need to protect this fragile artifact, but the cage made for an incongruous sight, and some people had climbed on top of it to scratch out more graffiti, including a swastika.

Back at the campsite, Austin had built a fire, and we sat around it as dusk turned to a star-filled night. The air was still, and we could hear the song of crickets and the occasional splash of fish jumping. Soon, what sounded like fireworks echoed on the canyon walls, and the occupants of a nearby houseboat treated us to an eclectic playlist that included “Macarena” and “Wheels on the Bus.”

On our last morning, the goal was to see whether the work of recent GRIT trips in the area had succeeded in deterring vandals. Feeling optimistic, we lugged only one set of tools on the climb up a steep dune. Once on top, we couldn’t find any new graffiti. And the spots that had been cleaned up months ago were nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding rock, the striations from scraping resembling those formed during the deposition of the layers of sand. Back in the boat, we cruised to a nearby cove to check on the status of another recent cleanup. Austin and Anderson used binoculars to confirm that that site, too, was still free of graffiti. Austin, who had helped clean some of the walls he was looking at, said he was relieved.

Of course, I had nothing to do with that earlier effort, yet I felt some sense of satisfaction in seeing that the work — including our own — apparently hadn’t been done in vain. Now all that was left for us to do was to enjoy one last ride on the lake. Anderson turned the boat around, accelerated, and we zoomed by ocher mesas and spires under a bright blue sky.