People hunted in these canyons 12,000 years ago, but no paintings are known from them. By about 7,000 years ago the climate had turned dry and a new way of life had taken hold: small groups gathering plants and hunting small game from the rock shelters. Some of them painted. The Pecos River style they left appears only in the country where the Rio Grande, the Pecos and the Devils rivers meet, at more than 200 sites.
Fate Bell Shelter, named for the woman who owned the land, is about 150 yards long and 40 feet deep, and people lived in it for more than 8,000 years. Its paintings are among the best preserved of the Pecos River style, which the Handbook of Texas dates to between three and four thousand years ago: many-colored, faceless human figures, elaborately dressed and holding spear-throwers and darts, their outstretched arms turning in later work into something like wings. Looters have damaged it; the University of Texas excavated it in 1932. The shelter is reached only on a ranger-led tour, offered Wednesday through Sunday by reservation. The paintings are fragile, and touching or wetting them destroys them.
The state bought the land between 1973 and 1977 and opened the park in 1980. Its name comes from the Black Seminole scouts of Lt. John L. Bullis, who sometimes camped by a spring in the canyon. Almost 10 miles of trails run along the rim and to the Rio Grande, past the grade of the Southern Pacific line abandoned in 1892.
The closest stops worth working into your route