Carved Symbols, The Capital Letter "H"

The more you hunt for treasure caches the more carvings you are bound to run into. The more carvings you run into the more you will find different interpretations for the same symbol. This article is about a symbol I have run across on several occasions and each time it has meant something a little different. This is because different individuals/groups were responsible for making the carvings and each used the carving as they interpreted it. They didn’t have a book they carried around that said, “this symbol means this”.

The symbol I am referring to is the capital letter H. Take notice that I said the CAPITAL letter H. The capital letter H and the lower case h can, and generally do, mean something different. In the case of the capital H, I have found it to mean a “tunnel”, a “hill”, the “hole”(and not because of the H, I will explain this later), to look up or “high” and it has been used as a reference for a starting point with no actual meaning other than find the H and start there.

One capital H I came across was used twice in the same trail and had two different meanings. This particular H is carved on a large boulder and the boulder sits in the bottom of a small valley directly below a sandstone bluff about 40 feet above the boulder. In the first use of the H it told me “high” or look up. When I did I saw the bluff and in climbing up to the bluff (a real pain in the butt) I found a carved map. This was a fairly simple interpretation but it was a correct interpretation.

The second time this H was used was in the map itself. About half way through the carved map a capital H showed up and had I been just a little smarter at the time I may have skipped the first half of the map and gone directly to the H because the first half of the map took me all over the valley floor just to bring me back to the H carved on the boulder where I started. You can imagine that at this point I was really cussing the outlaw that made this map! So the second time the H was used was as a marker in the map itself. In the second instance the H didn’t mean anything other than “at the H”.

I have also found that the capital H can mean “hole”, but only in certain instances. In the one situation where I found the H to mean a hole the H wasn’t really an H but intended give you the impression it was an H. Are you confused yet? Yea, me too! This H, I have included a photo for you to see, looks like it had been weathered enough to change part of the letter. At least that was my first thought but I later realized this was a mistake. If you look at this carving closely you will see that the top half of the H looks like a squared off U. This squared off U is a sign I have seen several times and means “hole”. This is simply a picture of a hole in the ground. In this case, the carver was trying to camouflage the symbol by making it look like an H.

See how simple treasure hunting is! Now you know why I don’t have much hair. Between treasure hunting and two daughters it just went by the wayside.