Reno Cave, one of Minnesota's earliest recorded petroglyph sites (Lewis/Winchell), is sited in a sandstone outcropping above the Mississippi River, approximately 950 feet ASL. The revised estimate of height (roughly double earliest reports) places the Reno Cave site much closer to the 980-1060 ft range of rock art sites discovered in recent years in the topographically similar Wisconsin Driftless Area (Lowe 1987).
Reno Cave was studied by Lewis and Winchell, the latter's drawings of twelve petroglyphs (out of an unknown number) having served as the only graphic record of this well-known rock art site. Subsequent state update surveys (1931,1967, 1979) indicated a virtual disappearance of all prehistoric petroglyphs.
"North window image" - Lewis and Winchell-1911 "East window image" - Lewis and Winchell-1911 Reno Cave is deep, wide, and high; configuration is two fissure caves, two bays with "windows" looking north and east, and a small central area. Entrance, from the southeast, is up a winding passage and two steps of 56 cm and 22 cm, respectively. The cave has been used frequently and recently for habitation. Firecracked interior walls show evidence of cooking and campfires.
Most of the cave's sandstone wall face is well scoured by wind and rain, showing the immature surfacing of newly exposed soft stone and highlighting the recent graffiti which covers virtually all accessible wall and ceiling surface. The cave floor is deep with abraded sand, and no cultural material (other than camping debris) was unearthed in a series of random trowel tests.
The investigators photo-documented the entire interior wall surface of the cave, moving from the entrance passage at the southeast in a full circle west, north, and east, ceiling to floor, left to right, on each distinct wall surface. The process of photo-documentation permitted detailed study of the walls for existing prehistoric glyphs with the hope that, over time, some might have survived if "buried" by closely surrounding modern carvings.
Two possible older petroglyph groups were noted on the west wall separating the two fissures, a surface which evidenced in one small area the only relatively weathered, unabraded appearance in the entire cave. One group of glyphs, at eye-level and crowded by much newer carvings, consisted of a turkey track with a diamond-and-central -groove motif on either side, similar to glyphs noted by the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center (MVAC) researchers at Fish's Cave (Boszhardt 1994). A second group of indistinct abstract incisions was uncovered by the investigators working with a brush at the base of the same west wall.
A possible incised "face" petroglyph, much weathered but quite similar in shape, scale and style to one of the twelve glyphs recorded by Winchell, was found high up by the window in the north bay, and a second "face," this in carved relief, was noted on the wall close to the east bay window.
Exterior outcrop walls were studied for additional markings but none were found beyond recent graffiti.
REFERENCES CITED LOWE, DAVID. 1987. Rock Art Survey of the Blue Mounds Creek and Mill Creek Drainages in Iowa and Dane Counties, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Archeologist 68:341-375.BOSZHARDT, ROBERT F. 1994 Rock Art Research in Western Wisconsin, 1994-1995: Fig. 21.
