Guadalupe Peak, Texas' highest mountain at 8,749 feet above sea level, dominates one of the state's most scenic and least-known areas. It rises behind and to the right of El Capitan, a sheer wall 8,078 feet high that towers more than 3,000 feet above this spot and marks the south end of the Guadalupe Range. Although the mountainside appears stark, the Guadalupes conceal watered canyons shaded by bigtooth maples, velvet ash, junipers, and ponderosa pines, and beyond the ridge lies a forest of douglas fir and pine that is home to black bears, mountain lions, and deer. Legends of hidden gold in the mountains date to Spanish rule, including one that Apache Chief Geronimo believed the richest gold mines in the western world were hidden in the Guadalupes. The area's true value lies in its scenery and living world, resembling the landscape experienced by its early inhabitants. Excavators have found spearheads, pictographs, and human remains in cliff caves together with bones of long-extinct bison, dire wolf, and musk ox, and carbon-14 dating indicates humans occupied the area 12,000 years ago. Geologically, the Guadalupe Mountains reveal the Capitan reef, formed by algae, sponges, and other ancient marine life during the Permian period more than 200 million years ago, when much of west Texas and New Mexico lay beneath the Permian Sea. For centuries, El Capitan served as a guidepost for Native Americans, Spanish explorers, the U.S. Cavalry, and geologists, and today visitors to Guadalupe Mountains National Park use the same guidepost to explore the surrounding wilderness and hidden mountain oasis.