Hueco Tanks: Twenty Thousand Years at the Water

Thirty-two miles northeast of downtown El Paso, three low syenite mountains rise from the Chihuahuan Desert and collect rainwater in natural basins called huecos. In a landscape where water is the organizing fact of existence, these basins were, for thousands of years, among the most important gathering points in the region. People came here to drink. They came to hunt the animals that came to drink. They stayed, and they left a record of their presence on the rock faces of the formations in one of the densest concentrations of pictographs in North America.

The rock art at Hueco Tanks spans thousands of years, with the earliest abstract paintings dated to roughly six thousand years before the common era. The oldest images are abstract geometric designs, spirals and dots and hand prints, left by hunter-gatherer peoples whose cultural affiliation is unknown. Later images include the distinctive masks associated with the Jornada Mogollon culture, a people who lived in this desert basin region from roughly two hundred through fourteen hundred of the current era. The Jornada Mogollon masks are recognizable across the region, painted in black and red and white on sheltered rock faces, and Hueco Tanks holds one of the largest collections.

The Tigua of Ysleta del Sur consider Hueco Tanks a sacred site, as do the Mescalero Apache and the Kiowa. Most of the park, including the most sensitive pictograph areas, can be entered only on a guided tour.

Visitor numbers are now limited, and only North Mountain is open without a guide.

What the rock face holds is a record of everyone who ever came to this water. The desert preserved it because nothing grows easily enough here to cover it over.