DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the marker at Monahans Sandhills State Park tells it, and I'm taking that straight from the official inscription. Now, most people pull off the highway, see a sea of sand dunes rolling in every direction, and figure they've stumbled onto the set of some desert movie. But friend, these particular hills have been keeping secrets for about ten thousand years, and they are not even close to done.
The sand itself is the first storyteller. Visitors today still find flint points lying around out here — arrowheads, worked stone, the kind of thing you almost don't believe is real until it's sitting in your palm. Sandstone metates and manos, the grinding tools of ancient peoples, turn up in the dunes.
The marker says people were here as early as ten thousand years ago and as late as the eighteen-seventies. That's a long run for any address. And here's where it gets strange and wonderful.
Those dunes you're looking at? They weren't always dunes. Bones of great mammoths and gigantic bison have been found here, and what they prove is that in post-glacial times this was a land of lakes and tall grasses.
Lakes. Right here. The desert has a memory, and it's a long one.
By the fifteen hundreds, history was walking through on two legs. Cabeza de Vaca came through in fifteen thirty-five. Antonio de Espejo in fifteen eighty-three.
Both of them encountered the Jumanos — a historic tribe that hunted these sands. Then in fifteen ninety, Castano de Sosa found a tribe he called Vaqueros, because they lived by hunting cows — buffalo, that is. That tribe, the marker tells us, was later called Apaches.
Now the Apaches had this place, but they weren't going to keep it without a fight. For more than a hundred years, this spot sat right on the great Comanche War Trail, a trail that extended all the way down into Mexico. Apache fought Comanche here — fought them over pools of water and over the acorns of the dwarf Shinnery oak.
The same scrubby little oaks you can still see anchoring these dunes today. Imagine that: men fighting to the death over water and acorns in the shade of trees that are still standing. Then gold changed everything — the way gold has a habit of doing.
The California Trail, also called the Emigrant Trail, came cutting right through these Sand Hills, powered by the gold rush. Captain Randolph B. Marcy of the U.S. topographical engineers was the first to map it through here, in September of eighteen forty-nine.
Then in eighteen fifty-four, Captain John Pope came through exploring a railroad route toward the Pacific Ocean. Two captains, a gold rush, and a dream of steel rails across a continent — all of it funneled through the same shifting sand. Ward County eventually acquired the land and built a museum here.
Then in nineteen fifty-seven, three thousand acres of these Sand Hills were designated a state park. Today there are picnic facilities, a museum, and ten thousand years of human story buried just beneath your feet. Some sands shift.
These remember.
What the marker says
In these shifting seas of sand, rich in stone evidences of primitive men, today's visitors find flint points, sandstone metates and manos of peoples who were here as early as 10,000 years ago and late as the 1870s. Bones of great mammoths and gigantic bison prove that this desert was in post-glacial times a land of lakes and tall grasses. Cabeza de Vaca in 1535 and Antonio de Espejo in 1583 encountered Jumanos, historic tribe which hunted here. In 1590 Castano de Sosa found a tribe he called Vaqueros because they lived by hunting cows (buffalo)--the tribe later called Apaches. For more than 100 years at this stop on great Comanche War Trail extending into Mexico. Apache fought Comanche for pools of water and acorns of dwarf Shinnery oak. The California or Emigrant Trail through the Sand Hills started with the gold rush. Was first mapped in September 1849 by Capt. Randolph B. Marcy, U. S. topographical engineers, and in 1854 by Capt. John Pope, who explored a railroad route toward the Pacific Ocean. 3,000 acres of Sand Hills were designated in 1957 as a state park, after acquisition and construction of museum by Ward County. Has picnic facilities.