Guadalupe Peak
Pine Springs, Culberson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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. Seer 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 archeology 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.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
At 8,751 feet, Guadalupe Peak crowns a rugged corner of far West Texas where a sheer limestone escarpment—once part of the vast Capitan reef that formed beneath a Permian sea—rises above the Chihuahuan Desert. The range's hidden canyons sheltered people for a very long time: carbon-dated remains in its cliff caves point to human occupancy some 12,000 years ago, alongside the bones of Ice Age bison and dire wolf. In later centuries it was Apache country, and Spanish conquistadors and prospectors like Ben Sublett spun enduring legends of hidden gold in its folds.
Why it matters
The peak ties together deep time and frontier myth—an Ice Age human presence, a world-class fossil reef, and the lost-gold lore that drew Spanish and Anglo fortune-seekers into the Southwest.
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Related people
- · Geronimo
- · Ben Sublett
Themes & tags
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