The Pinnacle Peak Inscription — A Proposed Matt Warner Signature

An eroded axle-grease inscription on a signature panel above Pinnacle Peak, reading Ma Wa over a partial date. Roughly half the inscription is lost to weathering and the date cannot be read. It is proposed here — on converging paleographic and documentary grounds, and offered openly for scrutiny — as the hand of the outlaw Matt Warner, who through the same years held land and kept the peace a few miles off, in Price. The record extends, below, to the homestead ground itself — the works still standing on his patented acres.

The reading

MA · WA 1 9 — as it survives — the balance of the surname and the date weathered from the stone

What remains reads Ma Wa, above a partial date beginning 19—. The strokes are laid in axle grease, the common marking medium of the early-1900s stockmen and travelers who signed these Carbon County panels. Approximately half of the inscription — the remainder of the surname and the balance of the year — has eroded away. One digit of the date survives as a reversed 9, cut backward in the manner of many a frontier hand — the same idiosyncrasy that recurs in the securely legible exemplar below.

The case for the hand

No single mark carries the attribution. It rests on four independent strands that meet at the same man:

A securely legible exemplar (Plate II) — “MAT WARNER, FEB 11, 1920” — establishes that Matt Warner signed rock in exactly this medium and region, spelling his given name Mat with a single T, as he was known to, and forming his figures in a distinctive, backward-leaning hand. The Pinnacle Peak partial is consistent with that hand.
A dated companion on the same panel (Plate III) — “M. T. Harmon, Price, Ut., April 14, 1909” — fixes the panel’s period and locale: signers out of Price, Carbon County, in the century’s first decade.
Documentary placement (Plate IV) — the United States homestead patent of Willard E. Christensen, Matt Warner’s legal birth name, No. 649934, granted 9 October 1918 and recorded in Carbon County at Price on 20 April 1922. The man the inscription would name was demonstrably resident and landholding in this county across precisely these years.
A spatial association: the panel does not stand at random. It is set in the same canyon that leads to Warner’s own homestead — the patented ground recorded below. Whoever cut “Ma Wa” here was on the very approach to Willard E. Christensen’s claim.

None of these, alone, proves authorship, and the surviving letters are too few — the date too far gone — to call the matter settled. What can be said is narrower and firmer: a partial “Ma Wa” signature, in Matt Warner’s medium and hand, on a panel dated to Price in 1909, in the one county where he then lived, is more economically explained by his authorship than by coincidence. It is entered here as a proposed attribution, and left open to correction.

Plates

The eroded axle-grease inscription reading Ma Wa above a partial date, on gray limestone — **Plate I** — The inscription. “Ma Wa,” above a partial date; axle grease on limestone, roughly half lost to erosion. The surviving digit reads as a reversed 9.

A securely legible axle-grease inscription reading MAT WARNER, FEB 11, 1920 — **Plate II** — Comparative exemplar. A firmly legible “MAT WARNER · FEB 11 · 1920” in the same axle-grease medium — the spelling and hand against which the Pinnacle Peak partial is read. A second, fainter signature stands at upper right.

A dated axle-grease inscription reading M. T. Harmon, Price Ut., April 14, 1909 — **Plate III** — Dated companion, same panel. “M. T. Harmon · Price, Ut. · April 14 · 1909,” fixing the panel’s period and locale to Carbon County.

United States homestead patent for Willard E. Christensen, Township 14 South Range 9 East, Utah — **Plate IV** — Documentary placement. The U.S. homestead patent of Willard E. Christensen — Matt Warner’s legal name — granted 1918, recorded in Carbon County, Price, 1922. A public record.

A canyon approach below Pinnacle Peak, Carbon County, Utah — **Plate V** — The approach, below Pinnacle Peak. Precise site withheld.

The homestead

The patent is not the man’s only trace on this country. At the head of the same canyon that carries the inscription panel lies the ground it granted — the 320 acres patented to Willard E. Christensen — where the works still stand, or lean, or lie where they fell. What follows is a field record of that homestead as it survives: a collapsed timber structure, a dry-laid stone footing, the lines of an old corral and fence, and the scattered iron of daily use, set in a sandstone draw of the Book Cliffs country. The precise location is withheld. The structures are set down here as they were found; which of them rose under Warner’s own hand, and which under a later holder of the claim, is left open — the ground has kept the works, but not their authorship.

A collapsed structure of weathered hewn timbers with standing corner posts — **Plate VII** — A collapsed timber structure — hewn beams and standing corner posts, fallen in place. Cabin or outbuilding.

A dry-laid sandstone footing with weathered timber and a standing wooden post — **Plate VIII** — A dry-laid sandstone footing with weathered timber and a standing post — the stone base of a structure set into the draw.

A standing wooden post and fallen rails on the flat above a wash — **Plate IX** — Corral and fence: a standing post and fallen rails on the flat above the wash.

Coiled and weathered barbed wire on the ground — **Plate X** — Coiled barbed wire, weathered into the ground — the fencing iron of the claim.

Set down together, the axle-grease signatures and this homestead make the manuscript a primary field source on a place the paper record barely notes: the ground a bandit-turned-lawman was granted and worked, at the head of the same canyon whose wall carries the “Ma Wa” panel — his name, if the reading holds, cut on the road to his own door.

Record

Object: Painted rock inscription (axle grease), signature panel
Reading: “Ma Wa” / 19— — partial, ~50% lost to erosion
Date inscribed: Indeterminate; one surviving digit (reversed 9). Companion signatures on the panel date to 1909.
Location: Pinnacle Peak, Carbon County, Utah — verified; precise site withheld
Discovery: First sighted by Ryan Madsen; read and identified by the author
Attribution: Proposed — Matt Warner (Willard E. Christensen), on converging paleographic & documentary grounds
Evidence: Primary field record + comparative exemplar + contemporaneous documentary corroboration
Also recorded: The homestead ruin — collapsed structure, stone footing, corral & fence, artifacts — on the Christensen/Warner patented ground; location withheld
Sources: Research apparatus held privately

A note on method

This is a record that makes a case, not a verdict. The attribution stands on convergence — a matching exemplar, a dated companion, a documented residency — and not on any single letter. It is set down for the scrutiny of local historians and anyone who knows this country better; contrary readings are welcomed, and this record will be revised as the stone, and the archive, allow. First sighting is credited to Ryan Madsen. The reading and the proposed attribution are the author’s. Precise location and the supporting sources are held private, to protect the panel.