General Information
Hueco Tanks is an area of low mountains and historic site in El Paso County, Texas. It is located in a high-altitude desert basin between the Franklin Mountains to the west and the Hueco Mountains to the east. Hueco is a Spanish word meaning hollows and refers to the many water-holding depressions in the boulders and rock faces throughout the region.
The historic site is located approximately 32 miles (51 km) northeast of central El Paso, Texas, accessible via El Paso's Montana Avenue (U.S. Route 62/U.S. Route 180), by turning at RM 2775. The park consists of three syenite (a weak form of granite) mountains; it is 860 acres (350 ha) in area and is popular for recreation such as birdwatching and bouldering. It is culturally and spiritually significant to many Native Americans. This significance is partially manifested in the pictographs (rock paintings) that can be found throughout the region, many of which are thousands of years old.
The first paintings made at Hueco Tanks were done by members of the Desert Archaic Culture, and depicted abstract designs. These were created between 6000 and 3000 B.C. Between 3000 BC and 450 A.D., pictures of animals and humans were drawn on the rocks.
Around the syenite outcrops, the park is surrounded by Chihuahuan Desert scrub with creosote bush as the dominant species. The site contains enough water to support live oaks and junipers, species which survive from the last ice age. Other trees found in the area include netleaf hackberry, Texas mulberry, Mexican buckeye, catclaw acacia, and Arizona white oak. Hueco Tanks has the only population in the United States of the plant Colubrina stricta.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hueco Tanks", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
