Writer Is Dismayed by Abuse of Stoney Point Park

* Your story “Gripping Drama: Movie Paint Job Upsets Stoney Point Climbers” (April 7) reports the outrage felt by rock climbers over the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department’s authorizing the painting of sandstone boulders at Stoney Point Park to make them more photogenic for Hollywood movie filming.

As a San Fernando Valley resident who takes my small children on hikes in this park, I was dismayed by this abuse of what, despite much trash and graffiti, is still a wonderful park.

As a professional archeologist who knows the prehistory of the vicinity well, however, I was dumbfounded. Left unmentioned by your article is the potential harm to very rare archeological evidence in the form of rock art (pictographs and petroglyphs) which cannot ever be replaced if damaged or destroyed.

Slopping paint around in the interest of movie set preparation is the best way I know of, short of dynamiting the rocks themselves, to obliterate such fragile traces of prehistoric art. The lack of attention to this potential for destroying rock art is particularly puzzling in light of your story “Stone Sacred: Native Americans Get Rare Look at Cave Painting on Rocketdyne Site” (March 26), about a well-known rock art site on Rocketdyne property only a short distance from Stoney Point.

Prehistoric California Indian rock art is very rare and always in danger of vandalism by the general run of idiots that frequent the public parks with spray-paint cans, cold chisels and other implements of destruction.

In addition to such intentional vandalism, pictographs and petroglyphs are threatened with accidental destruction by those ignorant of their very existence. Many years ago, rock art at what is now Vasquez Rocks County Park was obliterated when the rocks were painted red to provide a more suitable backdrop for Hollywood filming. Now, history may have repeated itself at Stoney Point.

Must we add corporate Hollywood and the L. A. parks department to the roster of potential destroyers of the last remnants of pictographic art created by the people who lived here before the modern population of Los Angeles inundated the area?

BRIAN D. DILLON

North Hills