This collection contains four India ink drawings from tracings made of the original pictographs found on the formation known as the Painted Rock (La Piedra Pintada; also called the Carisa Rock), located on the Carrizo Plain in eastern San Luis Obispo County, California. Native Americans—primarily Chumash Indians—drew the original drawings on the sacred, ceremonial site. The pictographs were sketched in the 1870s by pioneer Carrizo Plain resident Mary Brumley Noyes, who spent part of her youth on the nearby El Saucito Rancho with her family. Painted Rock is a local landmark, rising dramatically from the surrounding flat plains. In the intervening years since her sketches were made, the rock art has been vandalized and has deteriorated due to human use and weather conditions. The collection was donated by her descendents in 1990. An additional donation to the collection is a short, unpublished radio script depicting the Brumley family's life on the Carrizo Plain, circa 1950s. Nothing is known about its author, L. Munson of Los Angeles. An additional donation traces the family's history and includes vintage prints of Painted Rock.

Mary Brumley (also spelled Bromley) Noyes was born in New York in 1857, the daughter of Chester Rude Brumley and Margaret Humphrey Brumley. She moved to San Francisco, California, with her family in the 1860s as her father pursued new business opportunities in the West.

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