06 Oct Toquima Cave
Toquima Cave, located on Pete’s Summit in the Toquima mountain range east of Austin, is accessed from a dirt road that leads over the mountains from the Big Smoky Valley to the Monitor Valley. Used for religious purposes by Native Americans for thousands of years, the cave contains numerous abstract paintings (pictographs) unique to the region. These paintings offer a view of the world from the perspective of a group of people living in central Nevada between 3,000 and 1,500 years ago. From the expansive view at the cave’s ledge, it is easy to imagine how native peoples might find their spiritual identity here.
The site is culturally important to the Western Shoshone; in order to gain their permission to enter the cave and make these photographs we made a presentation to the Council of the Yomba Shoshone Tribe at their reservation headquarters in the Reese River Valley. Fencing across the mouth of the cave protects the pictographs, but this was digitally removed from the interior panorama for aesthetic reasons.
Click the red hotspot to enter the cave.
Click here to see the location in Google Maps.
Emmett W Eggleston
Posted at 09:40h, 12 SeptemberI think you greatly overstate the spiritual imagery here. What I see is a bulletin board left by successive hunting parties to explain where to find water sources and their encounters with other hunting parties and travelers, along with some information about trails to use and trails to avoid.
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Posted at 11:25h, 03 October[…] and more firewood (remember the 35° lows), swing it by the campsite and continue on from there to Toquima Cave. If you keep going past Hot Springs Road and continue on the original dirt road you took to get to […]
Kathryn
Posted at 12:03h, 07 JulyThis is so well done. It is hard to get a “feeling” of what a place is really like on the web but you have captured it.