Hemet Maze Stone

I was flippin' through a book called "Weird California (Your travel guide to California's local legends and best kept secrets)" when I saw the Maze Stone, which is located so close to us in Hemet, CA. The book describes this place as:

"A big, striking petroglyph of unknown origin graces a small mountain area called Maze Stone County Park in Hemet, Riverside County. Inscribed on a large boulder, the three-foot-square figure is a maze formed by four interlocking swastikas. The design is almost unknown among Indian petroglyphs, and archaeologists attribute it to the so-called Maze Culture, which left only one similar design, miles to the south in San Diego County. Other people have other explanations. Maze Stone has been labeled everything from a 15,000-year-old remnant of the Cascadians, thought to be the ancestors of the Maya, to a religious symbol left by Chinese Buddhist monks at about AD 500. The latter theory is popular among historians seeking to prove that the Chinese beat Columbus to North America by at least a thousand years."

It is also a California Historical Landmark No. 557.

Driving west out of Hemet on Florida Ave., head north on California Ave. Drive about 3.2 miles till the road ends. Park here.

Walk past the gate and up the road about 5 minutes.

And to the right there it is. Surrounded by not one, but two chain-link fences. You can't miss it.


Some nice pretty flowers in the area.

It was too bad there were two fences, I could only get my hand through one fence which meant I couldn't get a clear picture. You can see the barbed wire on top. I assume there have been problems with idiots trying to de-face the stone.

It was a pretty cool finding something like this close to home. We got to drove through a part of Hemet we've never been though, nice part of Hemet I didn't know existed.