Hueco Tanks State Park is a few miles east of El Paso and just five miles south of the New Mexico border.
Back to Hueco Tanks this morning for a tour of some of the rock art, accessible only by guide. This was a relatively short tour up Mescalero Canyon to Comanche Cave. Started at Site 17, where great-great uncle Millard carved his name, and then we proceeded south into the center of the park. It was a wildlife day. I passed two oryx standing just off Highway 54 south of Orogrande, and then we pushed up an aoudad ewe and her kid in Mescalero Canyon near a cave where 10 Kiowas managed to escape the Mexican army in 1839. Saw a barn owl, and a snoozing rattlesnake coiled in a crack in the rocks.



This is upper Mescalero Canyon in the heart of the tanks. The impounded water is a remnant of a stock pond behind a dam built in the 1800s early 1900s by the ranch family that lived at the tanks. The diagonal slash of rock and shadow center right is Comanche Cave, and at the head of the canyon is another cave complex that Kiowa warriors used to escape the Mexican army in 1839. We pushed up an aoudad ewe and her kid here.



This is a Tiguan map of sorts, the three-sided box and arrow within the sun believed to tell wanderers from the tribe how to return to their homelands here in New Mexico.
I learned the hard way that within these caves and overhangs, even with seemingly abundant ambient light on a brilliant day in early fall, your camera may seem to have enough light, but the exposures are longer than you think and you need a tripod or at least a very serious effort to hold still to get decent focus. Will get it right next time!



These are the five dancers of the mountain gods. I have forgotten if the story is Kiowa, Tiguan or Apache. The legend is that two warriors, one blinded in one eye and one with an injured leg, were left by their party with food and water in a cave, and a stone rolled in front of the cave to keep them safe until their tribesmen could return. The two ran out of food and water and were feeling helpless when they became aware of five dancers -- four of them white and one of them black -- within their hiding place. As the figures danced around them, one used a sword to slash the warrior with the injured eye, and he could see, and slash the warrior with the injured leg, and he could walk. And finally the figure slashed the boulder blocking the cave entrance and the boulder vanished. The two men left the cave and below them were hundreds of people -- their tribe, joyfully waiting to receive them.



This is a finely detailed pictograph -- painted versus a petroglyph pecked -- attributed to the Jornada-Mogollon peoples, A.D. 200-1400. Possibly red ochre mixed with a binder and painted with a fiber brush made from sotol.



At Site 17 at the tanks, beneath the overlying lettering done in the grease from wagon axles, you can see a horse rearing with its rider -- attributed to the Mescalero Apache, who of course knew the horse, a "recent" arrival. Many people signed this wall at the tanks near what was believed to be a Butterfield stage station -- including my great-great uncle on July 25, 1884.



It was cool in the shade of this overhang when someone noticed Mr. Buzztail all curled up in this crack, wondering no doubt why it was darned chilly.

Thanks for sharing.
I always love to see different petroglyphs.
These are far different than any I have seen in central of northern NM.

Heh, here's another you might not have seen, of a coming-of-age ritual practiced in Comanche Cave -- a Native American version of circumcision ...






Oh, the humanity!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUL5w91dzbo

Thanks, Bill. Looks like a great area to explore.

Like the yankee woman said when seeing her 1st rattler,"Oh look,he must be friendly. See,he's wagging his tail".

Outstanding pics! Thanks for sharing. It's so sad that others, not appreciating what treasures they are looking at, have to deface the area. And people then wonder why things are fenced and become off limits. In this case, you have to look past it, but it still makes me angry.

Indeed! The round rock in Round Rock,Tx. ia a good example as well as some of the granite cliffs west of here;no one gives a shit about the class of (name your year) being spray painted on a cliff face.We DO give a shit about the debasement.

Great story and pics Bill.