Adjacent to the Edwards Plateau ecoregion (4K), but separated by the Pecos River valley, the Stockton Plateau is a mesa-like land with higher elevations than those in the Edwards Plateau. The Pecos River and its side streams erodes a canyon as deep as 1,000 feet between the Edwards and Stockton Plateaus.

With westward decreasing rainfall, the vegetation is sparse, even near springs and streams. Vegetation grades from mesquite–juniper brush westward into creosote bush–tarbush shrubs.

Tributaries and side streams of the Pecos River become draws forming narrow blind canyons with nearly vertical walls.

The first arrivals, who were hunters and gathers, came during a more moderate climate than we experience here today, and those ancients roamed throughout these canyons and plains along with several now extinct species of bison, camel, elephant and horse. Not much is known about these first wayfarers, except that some archeological evidence points to them making these caves temporary homes.

Later, a new culture of canyon cave dwellers arrived and did leave clues to their lives in a style distinct only upon the stone walls within Seminole and other canyon cave sites along the Rio Grande, Pecos and Devils rivers. Too, it is these ancients, who by their many pictograph, tell stories that we can only hope to understand today. In fact the number of pictograph sites swell to more than 200 locations that hold numerous examples of this extremely unique rock painting style. The stories that they tell often repeats from one location to another in that the same figures and motifs appear in different places scattered about within this relative small ecosystem.

Yes, the stories have been inscribe in the caves, as the writing is on the wall of the Fate Bell Rock Shelter and other caves. Will we have to wait for the ancients to arrive in the resurrection for the stories to be told and understood again.