Hueco Tanks has one of the largest concentrations of Indian rock paintings in North America, with well over 3,000 found to date. Hueco Tanks is like an art gallery on rocks. But the paintings are where ancient artists drew them.

Beginning with Archaic hunters and foragers of thousands of years ago to relatively recent Mescalero Apaches, Native Americans have drawn strange mythological designs and human and animal figures on the rocks of the area. It is also the only place in North America that has such a large number of painted masks with more than 200 face designs or "masks" left by the prehistoric Jornada Mogollon culture.