Toquima Cave

Tucked under a basalt flow east of the summit, the cave keeps its paintings — figures in red, white, and yellow, set where a spring meets a game trail, exactly the kind of place Nevada's earliest people returned to for food. What the designs meant is unknown; the marker is careful to say they were probably not messages or art in any sense we would recognize, but ritual marks tied to the hunt. Paired with the pecked panels at Hickison Summit nearby, they are the county's oldest record, older than any rush.

What the plaque says

East of the summit, north of the highway, and under a basalt flow lies Toquima Cave. Red, white, and yellow aboriginal drawings (pictographs) decorate its walls. Usually located near springs, as here, and on migratory big game trails, painted or pecked petroglyphs are associated with the food gathering localities of Nevada's prehistoric inhabitants. There are no known specific meanings attached to the particular design elements. Presumably, these people created the designs as ritual devices to insure success in the hunt. Most petroglyphs, therefore, probably are not "messages", or conscious "art forms".

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Austin — 9.3 mi
  A silver boomtown that hit ten thousand and fell to under two hundred — the living ghost town at the high middle of US-50
• Hickison Petroglyphs — 14 mi
  Western Shoshone rock art cut into soft white tuff at a 6,500-foot summit — the easiest rock art to meet on the loneliest road

More markers nearby

• The Surveyors — 4.9 mi
• Reuel Colt Gridley “Citizen Extraordinaire” — 8.9 mi
• Austin Churches — 9.3 mi
• International Hotel — 9.5 mi