Terlingua and Marfa

West Texas has quite a few ghost towns, towns that boomed for a while and when they lost their reason for being, usually mining, they died.

We have seen a few on our travels, but spent a bit more time in two, Terlingua and Marfa. Both have been revitalised, attract tourists but are very different.

Terlingua

Terlingua is at one of the entrances to Big Bend National Park. From Terlingua you can see the mountains of Big Bend which gives a spectacular back drop to the town. The town grew and developed in the 1880’s when it was a mining area for cinnabar, which mercury is extracted from. It declined in the 1930’s and 1940’s and effectively died as a community. The town was bought by the Ivey family in 1960’s and really started to make a comeback when it hosted a Chili cook off competition in 1967. It is now home to a great shop, Terlingua Trading Company, and the Starlight Theatre, which is a restaurant, bar and music venue. It does have other shops and bars too, although we didn’t look at them. Its cemetery is the nicest one I’ve ever been too, the grave sites are so personalised and it just seems to have a sense of love for the people who are buried there.

Quite a few of the dwellings are permanently sited caravans or RVs, as well as some nice designer homes. There is a real sense of quirkiness and individuality here and a sense of community. However, Steve, a local we spoke to in Marathon told us the house prices in Terlingua have gone up, and it’s seen as a desirable place to have a home, with many second home owners arriving, which is changing the community dynamic.

We could definitely have spent more time there! 🤩 I spoke to a park ranger who works at Davis Mountain State Park. She used to live in Terlingua when based in Big Bend Ranch State Park and didn’t like living in Terlingua, because it has a strong drinking culture, so I think visiting somewhere is very different from living somewhere!

Marfa

Marfa is a very arty place, having been revitalised by an artist called Donald Judd in the 1970’s. It developed as a town when the railroad was built in the 1880’s, as a water stop. It is in the high desert, at an elevation of 4685 feet. It is now known as a destination for minimalist art with many art galleries and art installations around the town. As we drove into the town, we saw some of this art, an outdoor exhibition of huge pieces of concrete. We were both less than impressed by this, so didn’t bother paying to go and see it up close!

There are some lovely buildings in Marfa, with a real art deco feel to them. The courthouse is impressive and our favourite building was the El Paisano Hotel. This has gorgeous architecture and features and was used as a base by James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson when they were filming The Giant in the nearby area. This hotel has been refurbished and revitalised, has exhibits about the film, and serves a mean margarita!

The other major thing Marfa is known for are the Marfa lights, an unexplained phenomena that happens about 7 miles out of town. There is a big rest area and parking lot for people to go and wait to see if they can see these unexplained lights that appear at night, usually dusk. We met a lady, Hilary, who is originally from Bolton, UK, and has lived in the USA for 30 years. When she realised we were fellow Brits she offered us the use of her vehicle for the evening, so we could go and see the lights. How very kind of Hilary, we do meet lovely people on the road! We duly we went up there and waited around, with lots of other people, but never saw the lights. Hilary told us she had seen them, on her third go!

A major disadvantage of Marfa for us was the noise! Remember it was built as a railroad town; the railroad was right by our campground and the trains hoot whenever they get to a crossing, which meant lots of tooting. This has been a feature of many places we have been to in the USA!

So two towns, having died then been resurrected by two very different groups of people. Whilst Terlingua may have a drinking culture, we really liked its shabby chic and eccentric ways. Marfa was a bit too artsy and pretentious for us, and we were happy to leave it to go to Davis Mountain State park for more lovely scenery , hiking and dark skies.