Painted Caves


Painted Caves was a cave containing a spring in Val Verde County, Texas, 20 kilometers southeast of Comstock, Texas. The cave accompanied a camp site along the San Antonio-El Paso Road on Painted Cave Spring Creek and was named for the indigenous cave paintings found inside. It was located 2.54 miles northwest of the First Crossing of Devils River and 15.73 miles southeast of California Spring. The cave is now submerged under Lake Amistad.

History

The cave just beyond the First Crossing of Devils River was described by Robert A. Eccleston in his diary of his journey over the San Antonio-El Paso Road with the military expedition that pioneered the route in 1849:
These paintings were made by a people called the West Texas Cave Dwellers who lived in West Texas for more than 1000 years before the Lipan Apache arrived in the area.
Thirty years later Burr G. Duval described the site in his "Journal of a Prospecting Trip to West Texas in 1879":
The site was submerged by the construction of Lake Amistad in 1969.