![]() ![]() The animals available for the early hunters to pursue included deer, rabbit and antelope. Nurturing plant communities were complex and varied much more than today. Ice sheets never reached the Southwest deserts and desert grasslands had not yet formed. This means the earliest residents, adept hunter and gatherers known as Paleo-Indians, used the element-protecting Cave, and it was their ancestors that entered America at the end of the last ice age – the Pleistocene! The paintings you see on the walls date back over 2,000 years and are remarkable in their continued color and symbolism…the cave remains an important and unusual piece of American and regional history.” Local archaeologist and historian, Grace Schoonover, verified the 11,000 years of habitation. The permanent sign found just inside the Cave states: “…inhabited for 11,000 years, this cave has been home to Hohokam and Apache tribes, as well as other early settlers of the area. Smoke-besmirched ceilings, graffiti, deeply worn floor mortars, and ancient rock-wall-art, including both petroglyphs (carvings in the rock walls) and pictographs (paintings on the rock walls), indicate the Cave has been a place of refuge and protection for many. Local historian and writer, Bob Mason, informs us the Cave and other caves along the stream are a result of wind and water erosion. Cave arrived in Tucson in 1870 and moved to Cave Creek later, thereby precluding that option. However, the Army created maps in 1866 naming the life-sustaining creek “Cave Creek.” We know Edward G. Cave, is sometimes credited with being the source of the name Cave Creek. ![]() In 1912, the band-shell-shaped Cave was the ignominious, final home for a multiple-claim-staking-miner and engaging raconteur, known locally as “Old Rackensack.” Old Rackensack, whose given name was Edward G. After an early morning battle, nine Apaches lay dead, tons of winter-sustaining food smoldered, and the Cavalry’s relentless enforcement of “surrender or starve” was accomplished. The Cave, which is approximately sixty-feet wide and fifty-feet high and deep, is the only cave which could accommodate eleven wickiup huts described by the Cavalry. It is the presumed location of an 1873 Christmas-day battle between the Tonto Apaches and the U. ![]() Located about a mile and a half from the heart of Cave Creek, the Cave is the namesake for the historic town of Cave Creek, Arizona. Steven Jones, Desert Foothills Land Trust naturalist, has identified fifty-six types of plants one may observe on a Cave hike. ![]() The journey to the infamous and iconic “Cave” on Cave Creek is an intensely rewarding adventure and hike for those who appreciate the enchanting history and enigmatic geology, flora, and fauna of the Cave Creek area. By Kraig Nelson, Docent and Preserve Steward ![]()
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