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

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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.

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M OLINO Cliff, so called because of its well¬ shaped stone mortars, rises to the right of the Terlingua road, about seventy-three miles south of Alpine. A ledge of varying depth runs horizontally across the face of the cliff for a distance of two hun¬ dred feet or more. This shelf of rock about one hun¬ dred and fifty feet above the road is protected by the overhanging cliff, which rises perpendicularly a hun¬ dred feet, making the ledge inaccessible except from a point several miles away. It is an ideal spot for Indian habitation, for it afforded not only this protected ledge, but a shelter known as the Chief’s Room, a cave, and a source of water supply in the desert below. Evidently the Indians recognized its advantages and made it their abode for many years. An interesting evidence of their life there is a smooth, worn spot on the rock be¬ side one of the pot-holes, an imprint left by the body of the women who pounded their corn in one of the sixteen mortars ground deep in the living rock. Page 18