Viva Terlingua, Study Butte, Presidio, Marfa, Alpine, and Marathon

We drove east from El Paso on August 25, headed for the Big Bend area..  I started the driving and drove I-10 to Van Horn, about 120 miles.  Van Horn is the home of Chuy's Mexican Restaurant, a favorite of John Madden's on his cross country jaunts during the NFL season.

From Van Horn, Jim took the reins and we took US 90 through Marfa and on to Alpine, where we stopped at Front Street Books, the place to stop if you're looking for books that have to do with anything Texas.  If they don't have it, they'll find it for you.

From there it was south on Texas Rt. 118 to Study Butte.  This was the first time that Katie had driven the motor home (ever) and, with expert on-the-road instruction from Jim, got the hang of it pretty quickly.  (Although I don't think she was ever comfortable driving it!)

We arrived at Study Butte (about 5 miles east of Terlingua and 78 miles south of Alpine, the county seat) and checked into the Big Bend Motor Inn and RV Campground.  The wagon below can be found there.

Study (rhymes with duty) Butte (rhymes with fruit) has about the same history as Terlingua (rhymes with nothing). Both were economically tied to the mining of mercury and both experienced the same booms and busts. 

One of the differences the towns have is that Study Butte was named after Will Study and Terlingua wasn't. 

Study Butte has a big arroyo running through it and fewer no trespassing signs. Terlingua has the picturesque cemetery.

After parking the motor home, we drove out to Lajitas, which is on the Rio Grande west of Terlingua.  The Lajitas resort was a pipe dream of someone (Steve Smith) who made too much money during the .com times.  He bought the town with the intention of turning it into a first-class resort with exquisite (and expensive) lodging and dining, championship golf courses, and its own jet port.  He invested about $100m into it and it ... er, tanked, much like the stock market this past week.  It was sold at auction last year for less than $15m (a precursor of the plunging housing market!).  It was about as crowded as Terlingua (a ghost town).

On our way back to Study Butte, we stopped at the Terlingua Trading Company (the old Chisos Mine Store).  It's selection of books is up there with Front Street Books and it has nice local arts, crafts, gifts and souvenirs.  You can also sit and have a beer on the front porch (that's Jim on the porch in the photo below, although he doesn't have a beer).

Terlingua has had a continuous population since the 1880's (the Commanches kept most people away prior to that), from the Terlingua Creek near the Rio Grande  stretching up to the higher igneous and limestone Mountains above the Terlingua Creek Water Shed.  It's a mystery where the name Terlingua came from.   In the late 1800's,  names of the Terlingua Creek were variations of "Latis Lengua, Tas Lengua, Los Lenguas," and other similar names.   It is only one theory that the name came from Spanish words meaning  Three Tongues.   The name may have been a corrupted pronounciation of the original name by the people who inhabited the area before the Mexicans and Anglos, the people who left their carvings on rocks, their grinding stones, their arrow points.

As Terlingua City Limits says, "Terlingua is a special place, because of its deserts, its mountains, its views.  The name is famed for quite a number of reasons, not due to just one specific event.  Thousands make the Fall annual  week- long  Terlingua Chili Cookoff,  others enjoy the peaceful, escape from the rat-race , the inspiring  landscapes, or to study the rich geology, archaeology and paleontology in the mountainous and desert land forms.   Those who live in Terlingua take pride to call this their home, and eager to see the arts and entertainment culture grow among this small population in a vast territory.   

 

Where are the borders of the terlingua city limits?   Fictionally, they begin within the National Park border and the entrance to the National Park, around Dawson Creek,  Southeast of Study Butte;  Then it extends all the way to the Rio Grande at Lajitas, and a little bit into Mexico, picking up Paso Lajitas; North to the Aqua Fria area;  and then East all the way to Terlingua Ranch Headquarters.

 

Encompassing all the communites from  Study Butte,   Bee Mountain,   Terlingua Creek,     the little 248 community, Ghost Town, Paso Lajitas  (historic Comanche and Apache crossing of the Rio Grande), Fulcher Ranch, and the many Terlingua Ranch communites virtually encompassing or surrounding all these areas.  

 

For fact,  Terlingua has no real borders.   Although she has had her name on, or near all of the above areas during the past 100 + years, she still remains proudly UNINCORPORATED!"

The following is taken from research done by Guary Nicholson:  Terlingua began life as a mining town (mine ruins in the photo below). The mountains and valleys around this area are rich with Cinnabar (Mercury), 

  

also known as quicksilver.  Native Americans prized the Cinnabar’s brilliant red color for body pigment.  With the discovery of quicksilver in the mid-1880s, the Marfa and Mariposa mining camp became known as Terlingua. The camp grew quickly and three years later the population increased to 1,000 inhabitants. When the Marfa and Mariposa mine closed in May of 1910, the Post office, established in 1899, was moved 10 miles away to the Chisos Mining Company camp. The name Terlingua was retained. By 1913, the town had a hotel, company owned commissary, a doctor, terrible phone service, good water supply, and mail delivery three times a week.  By 1930 the town had built a public school called the Perry School. Terlingua was segregated; Whites lived east of the Chisos commissary and Mexicans lived on the west side of town dominated by Chisos mine owner, Howard E. Perry’s mansion (ruins pictured below), which was erected sometime before 1910.  Cinnabar production peaked during the First World War and by 1922, 40 percent of all Cinnabar came from Terlingua. By the 1930’s Cinnabar production began a steady decline and by 1942, at the start of the Second World War, the Chisos Mining Company filed for bankruptcy. A successor mining company bought out the Chisos Company, but by the end of World War II most of the population had vanished.

I've seen a lot of this world, but Terlingua is one of my favorite places.  

The photo below of ruins in the Ghost Town is what I used as a base to design the header in the blog.

Of course, just east of Terlingua is Big Bend National Park.  Below are a few photos we took in the park.  On our last visit to Texas, we spent a lot of time in the park and we wish we could have spent as much time again.  It's a beautiful and peaceful place.  When you spend most of your year in Manhattan, a visit there is as close to Eden as you can get.

The Mule's Ears

The Santa Elena Canyon

We drove to Presidio along Rt. 170.  It's a beautiful drive as it follows the Rio Grande for about 60 miles west of Terlingua and has some stunning views.  The photos below were taken enroute. 

Katie took the photo below - what a great shot!

The road goes through the Big Bend Ranch State Park, which has free range areas.  The following photos were taken along the road.

The area surrounding Presidio is the oldest continuously cultivated area in the United States. It has been farmed since 1500 B.C.

There is a bridge into Mexico at Presidio.  Crossing into Mexico has been strictly enforced since 9/11 - you can only cross at authorized check points.  The closest official crossing point to the west is at El Paso, 250 miles away.  The closest crossing to the east is at Del Rio, 290 miles away.  The ironic thing is that there are many places throughout the Big Bend area where you can wade across the river into Mexico - just don't get caught.

As always, we couldn't stay as long as we'd have liked.  There's never enough time.  On to the east and Hill Country.