About Terlingua, Texas

A TERRITORY

TERLINGUA DISTRICT, TEXAS

Terlingua community residents, when out traveling, will tell you they live in Terlingua, Texas. But in this very remote area, the community is spread out over a fairly large territory, and no borders are defined. However, when they are back home in the desert, since we don't have street numbers, or hardly even any streets, (mostly dirt roads), the Terlingua residents refer to a local descriptive area, such as historic mines, creeks, gates, mountains, buttes, or ranches. (Then some ranches are so large that communites inside the ranch use these descriptive names.) Slowly street signs have been appearing but as yet, most of these don't appear on maps.

Earlier in the early 20th century, the communities that sprung up were defined by the mine that was near, or some other geographical description, such as a creek. In the last 25 to 30 years, tourism has brought in a new boom of communities, and even though the locals still use older mine names to define a certain area of the Terlingua area, the area of Terlingua is vast. To many, Terlingua is still a territory, still somewhat of a wild frontier, with history carved and notched deep in the memories of cliffs and valleys of the Terlingua Creek watershed. One cannot help but be reminded of the ranches that existed around this great creek, and springs that were on both sides of it that providing havens for Ranch and Farm families. A little higher elevations in the limestone and Igneous outcrops later provided another prosperous era, the mining of mercury. By studying the facts of history, the old maps, and old books that were published much earlier than today , one can truly get a glimpse of what the varied and interesting life was like that circled around the wide territory of Terlingua.

Early books from the mining era, recall Terlingua Abaja (now ruins in the Big Bend National Park) as the first village of Terlingua, that was abandoned soon after the mining era began. Other early pioneers such as Walter Fulcher in "The Way I Heard It",* wrote that the Mexican population of the earlier part of the 20th century still called Terlingua Abaja , plain "Terlingua". Early in the mining era, when the population exploded, the Post Office moved around a few times, and whereever the Post office was, that tended to be called Terlingua. The Ghost Town (of the Chisos Mine) was a mining village owned by the Perry back then, but according to Walter Fulcher, the Mexicans called that village "Chisos", up to the time it closed.

C. W. Hawley's "Life Along The Border"** is a personal account of his life in both mining villages, (Chisos Mining Co., and Mariposa Mining Co.), where he was the store clerk and Terlingua, Texas, postmaster. When the Chisos Mine closed in the late 40's, and the village was abandoned, the P.O. moved to Terlingua Creek, Fulcher Ranch, circa 1949. Later it was moved to where Tivo's Mexican Cafe is now. In the mid 90's it moved to its present location, on 118, near the "Y", north of Study Butte. (see more info about this on the history page: Terlingua History ). Study Butte is well inside of the Terlingua District, the far Eastern border is North of Indian Head Mountain. The map is interesting, and the original edition should be proudly displayed at the local Post Office and Bank.

Even though Terlingua is not incorporated, and there are no borders defining where Terlingua is, other than State Highway signs indicating number of miles to it, (and away from it), the Terlingua District was officially surveyed and named in 1902 by the Department of the Interior.

The above link to the map is a surveyed map by the Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. The Title of the Survey Maps are:

Terlingua Special Map

Edition of Nov. 1902

and

Terlingua District, Tex

Edition of 1902

reprinted 1929

E.M. Douglas, Geographer in Charge

Trangulation by Arthur Stiles

Surveyed in 1902 in cooperation with

The University of Texas Mineral Survey

Corners of the map show these survey latitude and longitude

NE corner 103'30

29'22'

SE corner 29'17'30

103'30'

NW corner 103'45'

29'22'

SW corner 29'17'30'

103'45'

The NE corner is on the North East part of Willow Mountain

The SE corner is below Dawson Creek in the Big Bend National Park

The NW corner is above Lowes Valley, to the NW of Black Mesa

The SW corner is below Amarilla Mt.

The above map in the original edition of 1902 is available at the General Land Office, Map 482, $20, and shows Terlingua to be at the Mariposa Mine, unlike in the 1929 version, which is at the Chisos Mine.

* Walter Fulcher's THE WAY I HEARD IT, edited by Elton Miles, of Alpine Texas, and published by the University of Texas Press, 1959. The book is out of print, but check with Front Sreet Books in Alpine for possibly a recent edition. Walter Fucher came to the Big Bend in 1912 at the age of 25, and worked as a cowboy, was a fluent speaker of the local Mexican language, and worked most of his life with his Mexican cowboy and rancher friends. He writes about how history facts gets corrupted, and states how things were back in the early days of Big Bend and Terlingua area.

**C. A. Hawley's self published "LIFE ALONG THE BORDER", written in the mid part of the century when he was 85 years of age, recalling his early life in the Big Bend, (early 1900's), working for the Mariposa Mine and the Chisos Mine. His recollections of these early days are most interesting, and show how the name of Terlingua was the name of the village that he took his first job, at the Mariposa Mine. This book is also out of print, but hopefully will someday be reprinted for the sake of personal documentation of history in Big Bend.