MuseumHueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site
El Paso · El Paso County · THC Atlas #4200001172
Texas history, up close and curated.
About this site
Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site is a museum in El Paso, El Paso County. It is one of 13 museums documented in El Paso County in the Texas Historical Commission Atlas, among 161 historic sites cataloged across the county.
The site sits at 31.9175, -106.0453 near El Paso. The nearest cataloged historic site is Hueco Tanks (historical marker), about 0.6 miles away. Others within a short drive include Evergreen East, Butterfield Overland Mail, and The Camino Real.
This record corresponds to Texas Historical Commission Atlas #4200001172. Use the map below for its exact position and turn-by-turn directions.
History
Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site is an 860-acre park and National Historic Landmark about 32 miles northeast of El Paso, named for the many rock hollows (huecos) that trap rainwater in its granitic hills. The site holds thousands of pictographs spanning millennia: geometric designs by Desert Archaic people from as early as 6000 B.C., the renowned mask paintings of the Jornada Mogollon after about A.D. 1150—the largest grouping of such masks in North America—and later images by the Kiowa, Mescalero Apache, Comanche, and Tigua. First scientifically documented by Forrest and Lula Kirkland in 1939, it became a state park in 1970 and was renamed a state historic site in 1998.
Sources: en.wikipedia.orgtpwd.texas.govtshaonline.org
