Officially called cairns, the rock piles and help mark where the hiking route in some parks, an article from the National Park Service states. Each park differs on how cairns are used but moving ...

In the Andes Mountains and Mongolia, rock cairns were used to mark routes to safety, to food, and to villages. Early Norse sailors used them to mark the land, long before lighthouses came into use.

Call them cairns, piled up rocks, or stone johnnies—stacked stones ... they’ve been found on the Tibetan Plateau, the Mongolian steppe, and on the Inca Trail in the Andes.

It would be hard to follow Southwestern trails without cairns. These little piles of rock help guide us along washes and into canyons, across folds of slickrock and timeless, high desert landscapes.

The calls to "knock them down" are especially loud this year, and park officials say that's exactly what you should do when you come across these so-called cairns - rocks stacked on top of one ...

Since the dawn of time, humans have been building rock cairns for a number of reasons, including religious ceremonies, burial monuments, survey markers, astronomy applications, landmarks ...