The canyonlands surrounding the confluence of the Pecos River and the Rio Grande are the boundary of West Texas – and they're famed in Texas archeology. Natural shelters here preserve stunning rock art, and one of the best records of North American hunter-gatherer life.

One of these rock shelters tells a particularly dramatic story.

Bonfire Shelter is the southernmost, and perhaps the earliest, evidence of an ancient hunting technique. Here, hunters successfully steered bison into a fatal fall. Now, Bonfire Shelter is the focus of new research.

Though he never witnessed it, he described its results in the journal of his 1805 journey.

“Today we passed... the remains of a vast ...