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For at least ten thousand years the site known today as Hueco Tanks State Historical Park has been a place of renewal. Due to its unique geology this area is able to collect rain water and maintain a good year round supply as well as produce climate changes that accommodate human habitation despite the "outside" environment. It has been an oasis for the migrations of numerous native nations, including those from Mesoamerica. For this reason we have named Hueco Tanks Izcalotlan from the Nahuatl izcalotl (renewal) and tlan (place).
About 5,000 years as the Teotihuacan civilization was being born the first Mexican pilgrims emigrated north taking their sustenance foods of corn, squash, beans, and chile. Izcalotlan became a launching point for the proliferation of maiz which eventually spread throughout what is now the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean islands.
Written on the cave walls of Izcalotlan are symbols special to our people, symbols that invoke the process of renewal, the unity of earth and sky through rain (Tlaloc). The nurturing of the earth from the underground spirit of the jaguar (ocelotl), the stairstep pyramid symbol of Mayahuel (Rain Altar), and the honoring of the Quetzalcoatl tradition with pictographs of snakes plumed with quetzal feathers. At the cave of the twins, two head figures with conical curving headdress invoking the manifestation of winter and summer, there is a calendar date of a tecpatl (obsidian knife) marked in the Mesoamerican notation system using lines and dots.
Hueco Tanks Izcalotlan gives us a Mexican heritage to this area that is at least four thousand years old, perhaps longer. Read more at Izcalotlan
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