Sul Ross State University - Brand Yearbook (Alpine, TX)

Page 18 text:

C HALK Draw winds its way for many miles south of Santiago Peak, a well-known summit of Santi¬ ago Mountains in Brewster County. Cut into the sides of this draw are numerous small canyons. The walls of one of these canyons along the west side rise abruptly to a height of approximately two hundred and fifty feet. Along the sides of the canyon are in¬ accessible rock ledges, one of which is perhaps four hundred feet long. On the south side near the mouth of the canyon is a rock shelter, interesting because of its evidence of Indian occupation — arrowheads, metates, and a pestle within its mortar, just as the Indians left it. This cave must have proved an ex¬ cellent camping place for Indian braves on the war¬ path because of the fact that it is near permanent water—a tenaja, or huge well, measuring one hun¬ dred and twenty-five feet by seventy feet, cut in the rock at the head of the canyon.

Page 20 text:

Hueco Tanks M OR thousands of years, perhaps, Hueco Tanks, situated about thirty-five miles east of El Paso in the Hueco Moun¬ tains, has served as crossroads for travelers. Prehistoric man, no doubt, made this a stopping place in his travels and migrations. It is certain that Indians often made Hueco Tanks a camp¬ ing ground. There are evidences of open camps scattered over a wide territory. In fact, the many pictographs on the rock walls indicate that Indians often occupied the area of Hueco Mountains. Not only was there good shelter, but there is a permanent supply of sweet water from a tenaja, or spring, deep within the cave. Pictographs on the walls probably announced in Indian language what a later comer of a different race printed in among the rocks, “Water in Hear-” Gold-seekers who were pushing westward during the years 1851-2 evidently stopped here for rest and water. On the steep walls there are fifteen names and the suggestive dates, 1849, ’50, ’51, ’52, carved there, no doubt, by adventurers who paused for a short breathing space in the mad rush to California. Ruins of an old stage stand just a short distance from the tanks have been completely dug up by modern treasure-hunters. Today, the spot remains much as it did when the Indians and pioneers camped there. Its silence and solitude are seldom disturbed except when picnickers motor out from El Paso for a holiday, or when students of Indian folklore make a trip to study the many interesting pictographs.