I appreciate the reply. I don't know the area, so will trust what you say it is. In the end, you're free to do whatever you want. I'm just hoping that maybe I, at the very least, brought some attention to the leave no trace. And maybe some people will read this and think twice the next time they're out in the wild about leaving their mark.I respect your opinion. I do love the outdoors, and I strongly adhere to leave no trace principles. While not an excuse to purposely destroy the land, it should be understood that Johnson Valley OHV Area is not exactly an untouched pristine wilderness. It's an open vehicle area containing dozens of mines and prospects, and criss-crossed with thousands of roads, trails, and tracks.
While I generally agree with your perspective in most cases, and I'd hate to see mounds of rocks or other markers dotting the landscape every hundred yards, there are some important locations and routes that deserve a memorial or waymarker. Already there are man-made survey monuments (usually either chiseled stone or capped metal pipe, often with rock mounds next to them) every half-mile on a 1 mile by 1 mile grid covering the vast majority of the Western US that define land ownership of private lands and the management agency boundaries of public lands, including throughout Johnson Valley. The only exceptions I know of are Spanish Land Grants that pre-existed the Public Lands Survey System, some wilderness areas, and some tribal lands (and some as-yet unsurveyed land in Alaska). Many of the monuments date back to the late 1800s. If you look around, you may see some of them there. The USGS Topo Maps show those 1 mile by 1 mile squares (known as sections), usually as red lines, and the sidelines of each one of those squares is (or at one time was) marked on the ground at the corners and midpoints (hint: if you see a '+' mark on the map, the monument was recovered by USGS surveyors in the course of their cadastral work). Where public and or private ownership boundaries follow divisions of those sections into 1/4 sections, or 1/16 sections (what your grandfather might have called the "back forty"), or even smaller divisions, there is usually a marker. There is probably a survey monument at the corners of the land your home sits on. Other monuments not on the grid lines have been installed at various locations for other uses as well, such as mining claims, benchmarks, triangulation stations (those are shown on the USGS maps as triangles), reference monuments, witness monuments, bearing trees (those are really cool to find) and a host of others. In fact there is a triangulation station about a mile and a half Northwest of Bronco Knoll that I intend to search for next time I'm out there.
If the Bureau of Land Management objects to this cairn, then I will remove it. Otherwise, I believe this spot is of significant importance to the off-roading community and merits a respectful monument. I believe this cairn to be an appropriate way to preserve Bronco history and create a challenging and rewarding destination for off-road enthusiasts.
(Also, I just happen to earn a living by marking my and your territory.)
As a side note, Johnson Valley is negatively impacted by litter. I hauled away a garbage bag full of trash that I picked up around my campsite, and I challenge every other member of this forum to do the same whenever they get a chance to enjoy our public lands.
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