Pictograph park to re-open after rock slide blocked road

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Montana's Pictograph Cave State Park is set to re-open Wednesday after being closed for almost three months because of a rock slide that blocked the road to the tourist attraction near Billings.

The 23-acre park has been shut since January as state workers and contractors cleared debris from the large rockslide from the only access road into the park.

The slide did not damage any of the park's three sandstone caves that house pictographs, or rock paintings. Some of the art is more than 2,000 years old. It includes depictions of animals, warriors and rifles from recent centuries.

One section of trail remains closed while work is completed on a new switchback needed to get around a huge boulder that landed in the trail during the slide, said Robert Gibson, a spokesperson for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Roughly 30,000 stone tools, weapons, paintings and other objects have been excavated from the caves and surrounding landscape.