Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Hueco Tanks, about 30 miles east of El Paso, is one of the most important pictograph sites in the Southwest, with the largest collection of painted faces in North America.

There really is no other place like Hueco Tanks, in terms of the nature and the number of the pictograph images. And for a tiny place of only eight hundred and sixty acres there’s just an amazing number of separate pictograph sites.

We visit the park next week during a segment of the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS.

This mask that we sometimes call starry eyed man has been staring out of his little niche in the rocks for between six hundred and eighteen hundred years. Um, it’s amazing that it’s in such good condition.

Vandals damaged several paintings with graffiti. During the TV segment, we watch as scientists, use high tech devices to restore the pictographs.

This is pre-Colombian, and the graffiti is about fifty years old. We’re using infrared light, and it’s the similar technology that’s used in tattoo removal to take tattoos off, so you can be very precise with the laser. The work is going really well, it’s really difficult for me to stop because it’s really exciting!

Check out the segment about Hueco Tanks next week on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV Series on PBS. Check your local listings.

That’s our show… Funding provided in part by Ram Trucks. Guts. Glory. Ram

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.