AA-2026-37C7DF
On the image
Somebody pulled the car over for this one. A boulder pocked with deep weathering hollows, the kind of natural sculpture that erosion produces patiently over thousands of years and a tourist discovers in about four seconds, sat there looking vaguely skull-like in the harsh midday sun, and that was enough.
The 1960s traveller with a 35mm camera and a roll of slide film had a particular weakness for rocks that looked like something else. A face, an animal, a ruin – it did not matter what, so long as it could be pointed out to friends later during a slideshow in a darkened living room, complete with the sentence 'now this one looks just like a skull, doesn't it.' Nobody asked whether the rock agreed.
A scrub of green forces its way out of the cavities anyway, indifferent to the resemblance being photographed above it. The hollows themselves are almost certainly tafoni, cavernous weathering carved by salt crystallisation and wind rather than by anything more romantic, but romance was the whole point of stopping the car.
The historian's note
The rock formation shown displays tafoni, a type of cavernous weathering common in granite, sandstone, and limestone outcrops, produced by salt crystallisation, differential erosion, and wind abrasion acting on the stone's surface over long geological timescales. Such formations occur worldwide in arid and semi-arid environments and were frequently noted as scenic curiosities along mid-twentieth-century roadside routes and tourist trails.
The photograph reflects a common amateur travel practice of the 1960s, when affordable colour slide film and portable cameras encouraged casual documentation of unusual natural features encountered during road trips. No specific site, name, or location is identifiable from the image itself.
The image has documentary value primarily as an example of recreational travel photography of its period rather than as a record of a named or historically significant geological site.
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Weathered Boulder with Tafoni Hollows, 1960s Roadside Stop. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-37C7DF. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/weathered-boulder-with-tafoni-hollows-1960s-roadside-stop.
@misc{aaAA202637C7DF,
title = {Weathered Boulder with Tafoni Hollows, 1960s Roadside Stop},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-37C7DF},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/weathered-boulder-with-tafoni-hollows-1960s-roadside-stop}
}TY - ART TI - Weathered Boulder with Tafoni Hollows, 1960s Roadside Stop PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-37C7DF UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/weathered-boulder-with-tafoni-hollows-1960s-roadside-stop ER -
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