Scratch marks slice across a charcoal image that appears to be a person wearing a cowboy hat painted on a cave wall in the Sandstone Quarry area of the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Other damaged images include horses, pack mules and deer. Photos by Clint Karlsen. Archaeologist Mark Boatwright points Friday to a rock art panel in a Red Rock Canyon wind cave that was marred recently by vandals.

Some time during the past few weeks, vandals hiked to a lofty wind cave in Red Rock Canyon and defaced a panel of charcoal-painted rock art that had graced a remote part of the Sandstone Quarry area for more than a century, a federal archaeologist said Friday.

In all, some 45 images depicting men wearing cowboy hats on horseback, women and children holding hands, horses, pack mules and a deer were scribbled over with the sharp edge of a rock, as if someone tried to erase the work of a Mojave Desert artist from the 1880s or 1890s, archaeologist Mark Boatwright said.

"For all intents and purposes, it doesn't look like they left one glyph untouched. It's a shame," said Boatwright, who works for the National Landscape Conservation System at the Bureau of Land Management's Las Vegas field office.

"This is somebody being mean-spirited or vindictive for one reason or another," Boatwright said after descending a tricky ledge above the shallow cave and gazing at the marred, 30-foot-long panel.

"One notch above a grapefruit is what you've got to be to do something like that," he said, referring to the work of the vandals.

Investigators believe a couple of people attacked the panel based on initials they tried to etch into the sandstone wall, Boatwright said. One of the letters appears to be a "K."

Boatwright said it's unclear if the charcoal pictographs of "anthromorphs" and "zoomorphs" -- images of humans and animals -- were painted by American Indians or white settlers, perhaps Mormon pioneers.

Regardless, he said, the vandals deliberately attacked a "shared heritage."

"We have high hopes it can be restored," Boatwright said.

The damage was noticed by a volunteer steward who visited the cave and reported it about the same time that state and federal authorities were putting out a call for more volunteer monitors to help curb a growing problem with rock art vandalism on public lands.

"If something isn't done to stop the damage and educate the public about the importance of cultural resources, Nevada's historical heritage will rapidly vanish and prehistoric archaeological evidence will be lost forever," said Sali Underwood, site stewardship coordinator for the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office, in a Sept. 6 statement seeking volunteers.

The Howard Hughes Corp. also has launched a volunteer stewardship program aimed at protecting rock art in its private Summerlin West holdings at Little Red Rocks, adjacent to the Red Rock National Conservation Area.

Bob Taylor, assistant field manager for the BLM's National Landscape Conservation System, said the problem with graffiti taggers and vandalism of public resources spans the Las Vegas Valley from urban areas to Mount Charleston.

"They leave their mark downtown and out here and carve their names into trees up on the mountain," Taylor said Friday, hiking with Boatwright through Sandstone Quarry to reach Prayer Cave.

"They do it for different reasons. I can't see the logic in it. They come all the way out here to enjoy the environment and then muck it up."

Taylor said the pictographs, which are paintings, and petroglyphs, or rock art etchings, are part of the Southwest's prehistoric and historic culture. "We can't replace it. Our biggest goal is to educate the public about the resource."

Boatwright said vandalizing sites covered by the Archaeological Resource Protection Act carries up to a $20,000 fine per violation and 10 years in jail. Most people arrested for such violations are convicted on multiple counts.

About 1.2 million people per year visit the 195,000-acre national conservation area.

"The public is a big part of the solution," Taylor said. "A small part of the public is the problem. It's incumbent upon us to educate them as partners in the solution."

Sally Billings, a site steward and community college anthropology teacher hiking the Sandstone Quarry area Friday, said the vandalism saddened her.

"I want to cry. People need to be aware of the importance of preserving the history of the area. Once it's gone, it's gone. It's a great disrespect for the people who came before us."