Guadalupe Peak

Guadalupe Peak, Texas' highest mountain at 8,751 feet, dominates one of the most scenic and least-known hinterlands of the old frontier. It lies behind and to the right of 8,078-foot El Capitan, the sheer cliff that rises more than 3,000 feet above this spot to mark the south end of the Guadalupe range., Starkness of the mountainside belies the lushness which the Guadalupes conceal. Tucked away in their inner folds are watered canyons shaded by towering ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, juniper and quaking aspen. McKittrick Canyon, scene of a four-mile trout stream, is also the habitat of the state's only herd of wild elk. Deer and turkeys abound., Stories of hidden gold go back to Spanish days. The conquistadors who rode north from Mexico wrote about fabulous deposits. Geronimo, the Apache chief, said the richest gold mines in the western world lay hidden in the Guadalupes. Legend holds that Ben Sublett, a colorful prospector of the 1880s, slipped off at night to a cave and returned with bags of nuggets., Probably less is known about the archaeology of the Guadalupes than of any other area in the Southwest. Excavators have found spearheads, pictographs and human remains together with bones of long-extinct bison, dire wolf and musk ox in cliff caves. At Hermit Cave in Last Chance Canyon, carbon-14 dating indicates occupancy 12,000 years ago. Geologically, the Guadalupes present a spectacular exposure of the famous Capitan prehistoric barrier reef, said to be the most extensive fossil organic reef known. It was formed during the Permian Period some 200 million years ago.