Chitactac-Adams County Park

Photo courtesy Santa Clara County Parks.

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Oct-Dec 2006

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by John Dorrance — published October 01, 2006

Incised into the creekside boulder is a petroglyph—circles within circles that can transport the imaginative visitor back 3,000 years. Chitactac-Adams County Park in Gilroy contains many examples of such rock art and more than 75 bedrock mortars.

Mutsun Ohlone lived here prior to the arrival of Spanish missionaries. They pounded acorns, nuts, and seeds in the mortars, producing pastes and powders for cooking. In the nearby rocks, they picked away smaller cupules and cup-and-ring designs.

Modern scholars visit this oak-wooded, four-acre site to study the symbols, whose meanings remain unknown, perhaps associated with rainmaking, fertility, puberty rites, or shamanic ritual.

It's easy to envision that the earliest inhabitants found this an ideal home, located above southern Santa Clara marshes and tucked in a sheltered valley with plentiful game—black-tail deer still roam the foothills and trout swim in the creek.

A self-guided interpretive walk around this small park (a 20-minute stroll, mostly wheelchair accessible) tells more of the Ohlone life, rock art, the natural history of beautiful Uvas Creek, and the burned-down Adams schoolhouse that served children from the 1850s until 1956.

Getting there: From Highway 101, take the Tennant Avenue exit in Morgan Hill and proceed west. Turn left on Monterey Highway; continue approximately 0.5 mile to Watsonville Road. Take Watsonville Road west 5.5 miles. Open year round, 8 a.m. to sunset. Staff-led programs and tours are available by appointment for groups of ten or more. (408)323-0107, www.parkhere.org.