DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Blue Mountain, up in Winkler County. Now, before we go any further, I want to address the name. Blue Mountain.
Sounds dramatic, doesn't it? Sounds like something that would stop you in your tracks on the flat West Texas plains. And it will — but not for the reason you might expect.
Because Blue Mountain is not, strictly speaking, a mountain. What you're looking at, four and a half miles north of here, is the southern escarpment of the Llano Estacado. The high edge of that great plateau dropping off into the flatlands.
At thirty-four hundred feet, it's the highest point in Winkler County, and out here, that is enough to make it a landmark, a lookout, and a legend. For a long time — longer than anyone can put a neat date on — this place has been exactly what you'd want to find if you were crossing these plains. Fuel.
Shelter. Water. The kind of things that, on the West Texas flats, you do not take for granted.
People knew it. They remembered it. They came back to it.
How many people, and for how long? Well, in 1938, archaeologists went up to excavate rock shelters along the ridge of that escarpment. And what they found was the answer carved, ground, and painted right into the stone.
Mortar holes worn into the rock. Pictographs on the shelter walls — images of human hands, serpents, horses, geometric patterns. Signs of prolonged occupation.
This wasn't a rest stop. This was a place people returned to, again and again, across stretches of time the archaeology doesn't bother to tidy up for you. There's one quiet detail the marker doesn't let you miss.
A spring once flowed near those rock shelters. Once. It's dry now — gone because the underground water table has dropped.
The same resource that made Blue Mountain a dependable landmark for all those years, silently drawn down until it wasn't there anymore. So you've got a not-quite-mountain that's Winkler County's highest point, a ridge full of pictographs that somebody painted with their own hands, and a spring that kept its promise right up until it couldn't. Out here on the West Texas plains, that's the kind of story the land just holds onto.
What the marker says
(4.5 mi N) Winkler County's highest point (3400 ft.), "Blue Mountain" is actually not a mountain, but is instead the southern escarpment of the Llano Estacado. The site has long served as a lookout and landmark on the west Texas plains, as well as a dependable location for fuel, shelter and water. A 1938 archeological excavation of rock shelters located along the ridge of the feature unveiled signs of prolonged occupation, such as mortar holes and pictographs on the shelters' walls, including images of human hands, serpents, horses and geometric patterns. A spring that once flowed near the rock shelter has become dry due to the lowering of the underground water table. (1964, 2009)