Paint Rock: A Half-Mile of Pictographs

The county seat of Concho County takes its name from what you will find a mile away on the limestone bluffs above the Concho River: a great many Indian pictographs stretching along the cliff face. Animals, human figures, geometric designs, and hand prints cover the rock in multiple colors. Some of the images are many centuries old, and the site was used repeatedly over time.

County commissioners selected this spot for their courthouse site in July of eighteen seventy-nine, drawn by one of the few reliable fords on the upper Concho. The town was formally settled around that date. It remains small and quiet, but the painted cliff just upstream is one of the most noted rock-art sites in Texas.