Nature created a lovely spot when it carved Keyhole Canyon. From the mouth of the canyon, the view sweeps across the Eldorado Valley to the serrated peaks of distant mountain ranges. The highway appears as a dark cord strung with colorful moving beads. Desert silence swallows sounds of distant traffic. A narrow niche in the stone defines the entrance to this box, or blind, canyon.
Steep walls carved from the granite by floodwaters guide visitors back into the mountain.
The gravel-bottomed canyon ends in the vertical drop of a dry waterfall. This is no place to be during a cloudburst, for the stone surfaces gleam from polishing by flood-borne sand and gravel. Signs near the fenced entrance notify visitors of the area's significance as an archaeological site. Inside the canyon and near its entrance ancient American Indians carved petroglyphs and painted pictographs. Intended for others dead long centuries past, these cryptic messages may never be fully deciphered.