Hueco Tanks Now a National Historic Landmark
Below is the announcement by the National Historic Landmarks on their Facebook page (3/5/21) that Hueco Tanks is the newest National Historic Landmarks.
Hueco Tanks is a large collection of rock hills in far west Texas that were frequented by indigenous peoples for millenia as basins in the hills, or "huecos", would retained pools of rainwater providing a freshwater source in the arid Texas desert. This images shows a portion of North Mountain in Hueco Tanks State Park & Historic Site - Texas Parks and Wildlife. Photo Credit: Nicolas Havlik, October 14, 2014
Take some time today to learn about one of the nation’s newest National Historic Landmarks: Hueco Tanks! Located in El Paso County, Texas, within the arid Chihuahuan Desert, Hueco Tanks is the largest of the Jornada Mogollon pictograph sites both in terms of archeological material and the abundance of Jornada-style rock art at the site. The Jornada Mogollon people lived in the Southwestern U.S. about 1,800 to 550 years ago in what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and northern Mexico. The site contains the largest concentration of painted mask pictographs in North America. The Jornada-style rock imagery at Hueco Tanks represents an apex in the development of Jornada imagery and is ancestral to the katsina belief system still practiced among Puebloan people today. Based on the rock art iconography, the site likely was a rain shrine for the Jornada Mogollon, and a focal point in their spiritual landscape or cosmoscape. Hueco Tanks is considered by archeologists to be one of the most significant archeological sites in North America for its spiritual, cultural, and artistic significance.
A multichromatic solid mask pictograph in Hueco Tanks State Park. Pictographs like these have been interpreted by archeologists and anthropologists as being related to water and may have played important roles in the Jornada people's petitioning of rain.
These red mask rock art images are located in the Cave Kiva site at Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site. Hueco Tanks contains over 200 face-like and mask pictographs, the most painted images of this type of any single location in the Americas.