Located about 40 minutes northwest of Del Rio on a 2200-acre tract bordering Mexico, Seminole Canyon State Park is one of the least visited but most scenic in the state park system.  The park's primary attractions are Seminole Canyon and the adjacent Presa Canyon, both tributaries of the Rio Grande.  The canyons are relatively shallow and wide, having formed when an ancient underground river created a long, narrow cavern which later collapsed (imagine Longhorn Cavern if it were much bigger and had no ceiling.)  Seminole Canyon is named for the Seminole scouts who discovered it in the late 1800's, but humans are thought to have lived in the canyons as early as 10,000 B.C.  At the time of first human settlement,  the canyons boasted a lush pine and oak forest with abundant large mammals such as wooly mammoth, camel, and bison.  But a climatic shift ca. 5000 B.C. created a much more arid climate, the herds of animals moved north, died out, or were hunted to extinction, and the natives which remained in the canyons were forced into a hunter/gatherer existence.

Dwelling in cliff shelters reminiscent of those of the Anasazi, the ancient residents of Seminole Canyon and the surrounding Pecos River region were known for their rock art, which adorns the canyon walls to this day.  Even though animals were scarce, the ancients believed so strongly in their art that they used predominantly animal-based pigments.  This factor, combined with the porosity of the rock, has preserved the paintings for thousands of years, and the dry climate has had no small role in this as well.  In fact, the sites closer to the Rio Grande have experienced accelerated decay over the past 30 years due to the influence of Lake Amistad on the ambient humidity.  The rock art of Seminole Canyon is thought to have had religious significance, perhaps painted while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.  Although some of the figures take on familiar shapes, the art is predominantly abstract in nature, and if it ever had a definite meaning, that meaning has been lost to the ages.

Seminole and Presa Canyons contain examples of every type of rock art that is known to exist in the Pecos River region.  The expansive Fate Bell shelter is the most visited, one of the most studied, and the most accessible of the rock art sites in the park, but the really pristine sites are somewhat more out of the way.  Frequent tours take visitors on a 1-mile round trip hike to Fate Bell from the state park visitor's center.  But the park offers only a handful of tours every year into upper Presa Canyon.  The hike up Presa Canyon is relatively difficult, requiring a good bit of bouldering, bushwhacking, and water slogging.  Some of the shelters in the upper canyon can only be reached by a short scramble climb, but it is in these shelters where one can find the most well preserved art, relatively undisturbed by human activity and far enough away from the Rio Grande for the lake effect to have had less of an impact.

Our merry band of adventurers, 24 in total, made the 5-hour drive from Austin down to the park on Friday afternoon, camped out Friday night, and took the Presa Canyon tour all day on Saturday.  The weather was overcast as we started hiking up canyon, but it cleared to near perfect conditions by afternoon, warm enough even for a few of our group to jump in the river.  We hiked down Seminole Canyon about a mile and a half from the Visitor's Center to the confluence with Presa Canyon.  At the confluence, Seminole Canyon continues off to the right and is mostly flooded by the lake from that point on.  We turned left, away from the lake, and began bushwhacking our way up Presa Canyon 2 miles or so to our first stop, the Black Cave site, which contained the most pristine rock art we'd see on the entire trip.  We ate lunch there and started making our way back down canyon, stopping at the Angel Cave site near the fork in Presa Canyon, Site VV75 up Seminole Canyon near the confluence, then at the famous Fate Bell Shelter and the Fate Bell Annex prior to our return to the Visitor's Center.

A few of us ventured across the border into Mexico for dinner that night, but the 7-hour hike had taken its toll, and we didn't have enough energy to do much else.