The Hidden Fight to Save Texas’ Ancient Indigenous Sites From the Border Wall
Public fury has erupted over new border infrastructure construction that has already started carving into the untouched desert landscapes of Big Bend National Park. But a less visible, underreported fight is unfolding on private Texas lands, where the planned U.S. border wall will slice through some of North America’s most valuable archaeological sites. In its path lie thousands of years of Indigenous artifacts, and irreplaceable ancient rock art that risks being shattered forever.
This year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) awarded billions of dollars in construction contracts for new walls and border barriers along more than 500 miles (over 800 kilometers) of remote riverfront on the U.S.-Mexico border. The stretch includes Big Bend National Park and other scenic, protected parklands.
Bipartisan public backlash against wall construction inside the national park emerged quickly, ultimately forcing DHS to scrap its original plan for a 30-foot steel bollard wall. Instead, the agency replaced that proposal with miles of riverside vehicle barriers and more than 200 miles of new access road construction. Bulldozers first began clearing land along the Rio Grande corridor near Santa Elena Canyon on August 6, but work inside the park has since been paused in response to legal challenges.
But DHS still plans to build the full border wall and a sprawling network of access roads cutting through mountains and canyons outside the national park’s boundaries. This construction zone includes private property owned by Texas ranchers and local landowners, who say their land also hosts irreplaceable archaeological sites that deserve protection. They warn the wall will split their property in two and destroy sites that have never even been fully surveyed or studied.
Archaeologist Bryon Schroeder has spent two years excavating land owned by rancher Jeff Fort. Schroeder leads the Center for Big Bend Studies at Sul Ross University, a research program dedicated to documenting the region’s cultural, historical, and archaeological legacy. Working slowly, removing just 4 inches (10 centimeters) of sediment at a time, his meticulous digs have uncovered pottery and melted adobe building material dating back as early as 800 CE. He has also found turquoise and marine shells, both clear evidence of long-distance trade networks that extended far beyond the region. Researchers have linked the site to Paquimé, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located 200 miles away in northern Mexico.
Schroeder’s dig site, called Canta Recio, sits directly in the proposed path of the border wall. Sections of the site are scheduled to be bulldozed entirely, and if the wall is completed, the remaining portions of the site will become effectively cut off from researchers. Schroeder compares the ancient settlement at Canta Recio to the Nile River communities of ancient Egypt; he estimates the site was settled four or five separate times between 800 CE and 1400 CE, as groups were drawn to the fertile soil left by regular Rio Grande flood cycles. Those same floods eventually forced each group to leave when the river overflowed its banks, only for a new community to move in once the silt settled. A cycle of settlement, flood, and evacuation repeated for centuries.
“There are even bigger, more remarkable sites upriver that are just incredible,” Schroeder said. “They hold so much pottery, Mesoamerican copper bells, turquoise, all kinds of extraordinary artifacts.”
The core paradox facing Schroeder and other archaeologists is that they cannot fully quantify what will be lost. Most at-risk archaeological sites are located on private ranch land, and have never been systematically studied. That means construction could erase irreplaceable history before researchers even have a chance to document it.
A CBP spokesperson told WIRED the agency is completing environmental and cultural resource reviews to reduce construction impacts, and balance operational border needs with responsible land management. But past review processes have not stopped historically significant sites from being marked for destruction.
A 30-foot steel bollard wall is planned to cut directly through the Polvo site near Redford, Texas, home to a prehistoric village with a burial ground dating back to the 1300s. The same site also holds remains of a Spanish mission built in the 1600s. Eagle Nest Canyon near Langtry, one of the most extensively studied and important archaeological sites in all of Texas, is also scheduled to get a barrier constructed through its boundaries. The site hosts the southernmost bison jump in the United States, where Indigenous communities once hunted bison en masse by driving the herds over a cliff edge.
Rancher Patrick Zuberbueler owns land 350 miles downriver in Comstock, Texas, a small town of just 268 people. He grew up picnicking in the shadow of 6,000-year-old rock art on his family’s property, where some art panels reach 50 feet tall and hundreds of feet wide. The federal government seized part of the family’s land via eminent domain in the 1960s and 1970s to create Amistad Reservoir and Seminole Canyon State Park, but Zuberbueler and his family still retain thousands of acres of the original ranch.
As a child, Zuberbueler used to catch minnows in the stream that runs through Painted Shelter, a limestone rock shelter on his family’s property. To him, it was simply “a place we’d go picnicking.” To Carolyn Boyd, an archaeologist and leading rock art expert, it is “one of the most important archaeological sites in the entire region.”
Painted Shelter hosts three distinct styles of rock art, created between 6,000 and 1,000 years ago. For Indigenous communities, these rock art panels hold cultural stories, traditions, and cosmological beliefs, acting as “libraries of human knowledge,” says Boyd, a research professor at Texas State University in San Marcos who founded the Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center in 1998.
Painted Shelter also sits directly in the path of planned border construction. “A vehicle barrier built just above the shelter will destroy the stream that flows through it, and could destroy the paintings themselves,” says Boyd, one of the country’s leading rock art scholars. Construction vibration could cause the limestone face to spall, or flake off in sheets, she explains, leaving the ancient art irreparably damaged. Boyd has documented 12 other rock art sites across the region that face direct destruction from construction, with another 79 sites that will become completely inaccessible to researchers after the wall is built.
The region surrounding the Zuberbueler ranch, called the Lower Pecos Canyonlands Archeological District, was designated a National Historic Landmark in January 2021, during the first Trump administration. Federal law requires agencies “to the maximum extent possible undertake such planning and actions as may be necessary to minimize harm” to National Historic Landmarks. But the National Historic Preservation Act is one of dozens of federal laws DHS has waived to speed up border wall construction, so those legal protections against harm are no longer enforced.
For Zuberbueler, fighting the border barrier is not just about protecting the archaeological history of his land. It is also about protecting the legacy of his great-grandfather, who first started working the ranch in 1898. “The ranch keeps getting smaller and smaller, and you can’t run a working ranch that way,” Zuberbueler says. “This is hurting our livelihood as agricultural producers.”
Boyd, who has spent four decades uncovering the history of the region’s rock art, says the situation feels like a living nightmare. “Maybe it’s just wishful thinking,” she says, but she hopes she can convince the federal government to recognize the significance of the region’s archaeology and revise its plans, relying on surveillance technology to patrol the border instead of physical infrastructure.
But time is running out to make that case. Miles of unused steel bollards are already stacked in staging areas across the region, and multiple temporary worker camps have been built on newly cleared land. Local residents report that wall contractors have already bulldozed private land before gaining legal approval, damaging irrigation systems and clearing native vegetation.
But many local landowners are not ready to surrender. Resistance is growing across private border lands, including new lawsuits filed earlier this month by residents of San Ygnacio, a town located around 275 miles south of the Big Bend region.
“It’s almost impossible to put into context all the different ways this will harm us,” Zuberbueler said of the planned border construction. “We’re not going to go down without a fight.”
