Baja Race Team Suspected of Carving Names Into Ancient Moab Petroglyphs

The Tusher Tunnel area, roughly 20 miles northwest of Moab and directly west of Utahraptor State Park, holds rock art that has survived thousands of years of desert wind and flash floods. It took one visit from what investigators believe was a Baja race team to leave a mark no amount of weather will erase.

The rock wall was defaced with etchings of "646," "Baja Toys," and "ATV," carved directly into the ancient stone. The Grand County Sheriff's Office says the race team appears to have carved their contact information into the rock. In other words, someone used a petroglyph panel as an advertisement.

Tusher Tunnel sits along a popular off-highway vehicle road, making it a natural waypoint for the kind of overlanders and off-road racers who move through the canyon country between trips. That access, it now appears, came with a cost.

The Grand County Sheriff's Office went public with the incident on Sunday evening. "It appears a Baja race team may have defaced the site by advertising contact information directly on the rock wall. This type of damage to cultural and historical resources is taken seriously and is under investigation," the post read.

Indigenous people created many of the rock carvings thousands of years ago, and archaeological sites are protected by law. Some panels in the Moab corridor are extraordinarily old: the sheriff's office noted the damage to cultural and historical resources, and regional petroglyph surveys have documented imagery dating as far back as 3500 B.C. No charges have been filed and no individuals have been publicly identified.

The damage appears to include names and advertising etched directly into the rock wall, an act that permanently harms cultural resources that have survived for centuries. The three markings, "646," "Baja Toys," and "ATV," suggest the team either races under that name or used the designation to identify their contact information, though investigators have not publicly confirmed what "646" refers to.

The sheriff's office released photographs of the vandalized wall and is asking anyone who recognizes the markings or knows who was in the Tusher Tunnel area around the time of the incident to call 435-259-8115.