Painted Caves was a cave containing a

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season), a season of the year * Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy * Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water * Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a ...

Val Verde County, Texas Val Verde County is a county located on the southern Edwards Plateau in the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population is 47,586. Its county seat is Del Rio. In 1936, Val Verde County received Recorded Texas Historic Landmark number 5625 to co ...

, 20 kilometers southeast of

Comstock, Texas Comstock is an unincorporated community located in Val Verde County, Texas, United States, about 20 miles northwest of Del Rio on U.S. 90. It is the town nearest to Seminole Canyon, which has been a site of human habitation for 9,000 years. In ...

.Gunnar M. Brune, Springs of Texas, Volume 1, Texas A&M University Press, 2002, p.455 The cave accompanied a camp site along the San Antonio-El Paso Road on Painted Cave Spring Creek (now known as California Creek) and was named for the indigenous

cave painting In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 ye ...

s found inside. It was located 2.54 miles northwest of the

First Crossing of Devils River The First Crossing of Devils River was the first point at which the Devils River was crossed by the San Antonio-El Paso Road. It was located 10.22 miles west of San Felipe Springs at the mouth of San Pedro Creek on the Devils River. It was ...

and 15.73 miles southeast of California Spring. The cave is now submerged under

Lake Amistad Amistad Reservoir ( es, Presa Amistad) is a reservoir on the Rio Grande at its confluence with the Devils River northwest of Del Rio, Texas. The lake is bounded by Val Verde County on the United States side of the international border and by ...

History

The cave just beyond the First Crossing of Devils River was described by

Robert A. Eccleston Robert A. Eccleston (1830-1911) was a pioneer, California Gold Rush#Forty-niners, forty-niner, and diarist whose records offer crucial insights into the discovery of the Tucson Cutoff and Yosemite Valley.Robert Eccleston, Edited by George P. Ham ...

in his diary of his journey over the San Antonio-El Paso Road with the military expedition that pioneered the route in 1849: :"Wednesday, July 11. ... After passing through a rocky country for about 3 miles, we came to water in a bed of rock. ... We here visited some caves in the rocks of considerable extent, in which were found Indian drawings, &c., such as buffaloes, men. They were colored."Robert Eccleston, Edited by

George P. Hammond George Peter Hammond (September 19, 1896 – December 3, 1993) was an American professor of Latin American studies. He published works related to the founding of New Mexico and other Spanish settlements in the United States. He was the director ...

and Edward H. Howes, Overland to California on the Southwestern Trail, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1950, pp.63-64, note 7 These paintings were made by a people called the West Texas Cave Dwellers who lived in West Texas for more than 1000 years before the Lipan Apache arrived in the area. Thirty years later Burr G. Duval described the site in his "Journal of a Prospecting Trip to West Texas in 1879": :Friday, Jan. 9. Pulled out of Devils River, 7 a.m. doubled teams up the hill. Moved only about 8 miles and camped near a water hole on the headwaters of Painted Cave Spring Creek. Painted Cave, two miles out of Devils River, is a noted camp and cave grotto, rather, which was formerly embellished with numerous Indian picture writings, no longer to be seen, but in their place appear the mysterious characters, "S. T. 1860", "X Plantation Bitters", "Tutt's Pills", "Sozodont," etc. showing that the Star of Empire still takes its way westward and that the peripatetic advertising agent is still aboard on "Devils River."''The Burr G. Duval Diary'', edited by Sam Woolford, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, H. Bailey Carroll, editor, Journal/Magazine/Newsletter, 1962, Texas State Historical Association, 1962, p.495
from texashistory.unt.edu: accessed January 21, 2014), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association, Denton, Texas. The site was submerged by the construction of Lake Amistad in 1969.

References

{{coord, 29, 14, 29, N, 101, 01, 21, W, display=title Landforms of Val Verde County, Texas San Antonio–El Paso Road Springs of Texas