New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting & Ft. Stanton Cave Conference — Abstracts

Caves formed by dissolution along permeability structures in Paleozoic limestone in the Upper Pecos Watershed are of geological, hydrological, biological, and anthropological interest.

A series of cave entrances are located at the base of a cliff on the south side of Cave Creek in the Pecos Wilderness. Cave Creek flows along the strike of south-dipping limestone, and a portion of the streamflow enters the caves, especially during spring snowmelt runoff. The caves extend a distance of tens of meters under the hillside where water flows into progressively smaller passages.

Terrero Cave is located at the bottom of a cliff on the west side of the Pecos River near the former mining town of Terrero. It contains more than 0.4 km of passages and rooms in westward-dipping limestone. Numerous speleothems have formed, especially where water drips heavily from the cave ceiling. The sound of flowing water can be heard at some locations inside the cavern and water surfaces from a narrow cave tunnel south of the main entrance. Terrero Cave is the type locality of the lampshade spider species Hypochilus jemez, and the harvestman species Sclerobunus jemez. These arachnids are named in honor of the Pueblo of Jemez for whom Terrero Cave has profound spiritual significance.

Pecos Pueblo, located 21 km south of Terrero Cave, was continuously inhabited from the 1200s until 1838 when the remaining residents migrated to Jemez Pueblo. In his 1776 survey of missions in New Mexico, Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez wrote about the church’s efforts to prevent native Pueblo residents from using caves “for idolatrous purposes.” Archaeologists Edgar Hewett and Alfred Kidder noted in the early 1900s that Jemez Pueblo residents of Pecos ancestry made pilgrimages to visit both the Pecos Pueblo ruins and a sacred cave in its vicinity. In 1925, Kidder’s team found “a very deep cave in the hills” extending for “nearly a mile” consisting of “a narrow passage with gangliar chambers,” a mud floor and stalactites. Kidder’s excavation of Pecos Pueblo discovered the tip of a stalactite in the Kiva 5 niche.

Willa Cather’s 1927 history-based novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, includes a secret ceremonial cave used by Pecos Pueblo inside of which “the sound of a great underground river, flowing through a resounding cavern” was heard. Cather visited the Santa Fe area in 1925, during Kidder’s 1924-29 Pecos expedition. The cavern in Cather’s book is mentioned in Kidder’s Pecos Pueblo Archaeological Notes where he states, “Willa Cather must have picked up tales of this sort” for her “delightful” novel.

The Pecos Eagle Society at Jemez Pueblo, a traditional religious group originally from Pecos Pueblo, periodically “returns to its aboriginal homelands at Pecos to perform ceremonial rites at shrines that still exist.” In the 1980’s, after decades of vandalism, littering and other desecration, the cave entrance was gated and locked by the state at the request of Jemez Pueblo. The gated entrance preserves this sacred cave for pilgrimages by the Pecos Eagle Society and protects the unique arachnids that live inside.