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Marfa, Texas

Everything Marfa is known for

31 songs mention this city

RoadyGoat plays music like this when you drive through Marfa. It's free on iPhone, and full songs play through Apple Music.

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Music in Marfa

Songs About Marfa

Hotel Paisano
Carson Jeffrey
97%
"Well I'm sittin’ in the lobby of the Paisano"
Marfa
robert earl keen
90%
Marfa Lights
Kaitlin Butts
83%
"Like the Marfa lights"
marfa lights
doug moreland
83%
Moonlight in Marfa (feat. Josh Abbott Band, Flatland Cavalry, William Clark Green & John Baumann)
The Panhandlers
83%
"Moonlight in Marfa"
Marfa Skies
Pat Byrne
81%
"Marfa Skies"
Marfa, Tx (feat. Ben Bridwell)
SUSTO
80%
"Marfa, Tx"
One Night in Marfa
John Baumann
77%
"One Night in Marfa"
We Were Something
Shane Smith & the Saints
55%
"Beneath the Marfa Lights"
In Texas With A Band
Brennen Leigh
53%
"That stretch from Post to Marfa's"
Border Kid
Scott Ballew
52%
"Have you ever seen the Marfa lights"
Border Radio
John Baumann
51%
"Broken heart outside of Marfa, while a Spanish angel sang"
Marfa
Michael Dean Pierce
50%
Under the Texas Sky
Paige Lewis
50%
"Marfa in the moonlight"
Cold War
The Rocket Summer
50%
No Spare Parts
Rolling Stones
50%
Bonfire of the Inanities
Austin Lounge Lizards
50%
Abilene
Plains
40%
On Hold
The xx
40%
With Love From
Aly & AJ
40%

Showing top 20 of 31 songs · Hear more in the free iPhone app

Artists From Marfa

No artists from Marfa in the database yet.

Know one? Add it →

Rivers & Roads in Song near Marfa

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Marfa.

US Route 90 9 songs Rio Grande / Río Bravo 162 songs Rio Grande / Río Bravo 249 songs

Musical Heritage

Ballroom Marfa RoadyGoat

2003

The building that holds Ballroom Marfa has been a silent-movie house and a dance hall since the 1920s. Virginia Lebermann and Fairfax Dorn took it over in 2003 and turned it into a contemporary art space — one that commissions painters and musicians to make work out of the Big Bend country all around it. Way out here in Far West Texas, they've brought in Jeff Tweedy, Feist, At the Drive-In. Over twenty-some years they've worked with more than eight hundred and forty artists, writers, and thinkers. And every summer they run a DJ Camp, teaching Marfa kids to mix and scratch, ending with a dance party at Planet Marfa, the bar down the road. Twenty years in, the marquee still lights up out on the high desert.

RoadyGoat → · 3.7 mi away

Flying Island music festival RoadyGoat

When the Trans-Pecos festival left a hole in Marfa's calendar, Matthew Bolick filled it. He put together the first Flying Island festival last October — four months of scrambling, twenty bands, and about six hundred people. He named it after a jazz fusion group his uncle played in back in the early seventies. This year it runs October twenty-third through the twenty-sixth: twenty bands across five venues around town, including a new one, the arena at the Chinati Foundation. The headliner is Tortoise, playing El Cosmico's small stage the day after their first album in nearly a decade drops. Out here, near the sky island of the Davis Mountains, Bolick says it takes either gumption or stupidity to throw a festival. Sounds like both, and it's working.

RoadyGoat → · 3.7 mi away

Los Yonke Gallos de Marfa versus Texas Playboys RoadyGoat

Out on the east side of Marfa, at Vizcaino Park, they play sandlot baseball — real sandlot, two homegrown clubs that have been at it more than fifteen years: Los Yonke Gallos de Marfa and the Texas Playboys. And because it's Marfa, the roster runs strange. Saint Vincent sang the national anthem in 2014. Ben Kweller straps it on for the Playboys. In 2021, Carrie Brownstein — Sleater-Kinney, Portlandia — threw out the first pitch, and it landed in the glove of a guy named Michael Camacho. Camacho's the local soap opera: back in 2009 he jumped to the Gallos while still suiting up for the Playboys, and the fans around here have not entirely let that go. Rock stars in the dirt, a small-town grudge on the mound. That's a ballgame.

RoadyGoat → · 3.7 mi away

Trans-Pecos Festival of Music + Love at El Cosmico RoadyGoat

2006

A mile south of Marfa, out in the high desert, there's a music festival that started before there was even a hotel to host it. In 2006, Austin hotelier Liz Lambert threw a party on a property she was still building into El Cosmico — about four hundred people showed up. The singer-songwriter Tift Merritt helped hammer together the first stage, then rode a bike around town handing out flyers. One stage, five acts a night, and it grew to around eighteen hundred people on twenty-one acres. The wildest night came in 2011: Patty Griffin was on the poster, and her then-boyfriend was not. He walked out unannounced. It was Robert Plant. Out here, the surprise guest just might be Led Zeppelin.

RoadyGoat → · 3.7 mi away

History of Marfa

The Mystery of the Marfa Lights RoadyGoat

Just east of town on Highway 90, you'll find an official viewing area dedicated to Marfa’s most famous and baffling phenomenon: the Marfa Lights. The first documented sighting was in 1883 by a young cowhand named Robert Ellison, who saw flickering lights and assumed they were Apache campfires. But there were no campfires. For over a century since, people have gathered here at dusk to watch for them. They appear as distant, mysterious orbs that can glow, hover, split apart, or dart across the horizon against the backdrop of the Chinati Mountains. Are they UFOs? Ghosts of Spanish conquistadors? Or something more mundane? Theories range from paranormal activity to atmospheric reflections of car headlights. Whatever they are, watching the sun set over the desert and waiting for them to appear is the essential Marfa experience.

RoadyGoat → · 3.7 mi away

Donald Judd's Concrete Vision RoadyGoat

The Marfa you see today is largely the invention of one man: Donald Judd. A leading figure in minimalist art, Judd grew disillusioned with the New York art scene in the 1970s. He wanted a place where his work, and the work of his peers, could be installed permanently, in harmony with its surroundings. He found that place here. He began buying property, starting with two large hangars downtown, and eventually acquired the entirety of the decommissioned Fort D.A. Russell. He founded the Chinati Foundation on the fort's grounds, turning old barracks into galleries for massive, light-filled installations. His 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, housed in two former artillery sheds, and 15 outdoor concrete works are the heart of his vision—a radical idea that art, architecture, and the vast Texas landscape could be a single, unified experience.

RoadyGoat → · 3.7 mi away

Marfa, TX RoadyGoat

Before the railroad snaked its way through this high desert, this land belonged to others. For centuries, indigenous peoples knew these mountains and plains, long before the surveyors arrived. Then came the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway, a lifeline across the vastness. Marfa sprang to life as a water stop, a crucial point where steam engines could drink deep before pushing on through the arid landscape. It was the 1880s, and a railroad executive’s wife, taken by a character in a novel, gave the town its name. Marfa remained a small ranching community for decades, quiet and largely unchanged. The altitude, almost a mile high, kept things cooler here than in the scorching lowlands. Then, something remarkable happened. The stark beauty of the surrounding landscape, that palpable sense of artistic freedom and serene isolation, began to attract artists. Donald Judd, a visionary of minimalism, found a home here. His Chinati Foundation, with its monumental art installations, transformed Marfa, drawing people from across the world to experience art on a grand scale, set against the backdrop of the Texas desert. Even now, echoes of the past mingle with the present. You see it in the wide-open spaces, the enduring spirit of the people, and the legacy of those who found something unique in this remote corner of Texas.

3.7 mi away

Marfa Lights

1883

The Marfa lights are often visible on clear nights between Marfa and Paisano Pass in northeastern Presidio County as one faces the Chinati Mountains. At times they appear colored as they twinkle in the distance. They move about, split apart, melt together, disappear, and reappear. Presidio County residents have watched the lights for over a hundred years. The first historical record of them recalls that in 1883 a young cowhand, Robert Reed Ellison, saw a flickering light while he was driving cattle through Paisano Pass and wondered if it was the campfire of Apache Indians . He was told by other settlers that they often saw the lights, but when they investigated they found no ashes or other evidence of a campsite. Joe and Sally Humphreys, also early settlers, reported their first sighting of the lights in 1885. Cowboys herding cattle on the prairies noticed the lights and in the summer of 1919 rode over the mountains looking for the source, but found nothing. World War I observers feared that the lights were intended to guide an invasion. During World War II pilots training at the nearby Midland Army Air Field outside Marfa looked for the source of the elusive lights from the air, again with no success. Those who have viewed the lights over a long period personify them and insist that they are not only harmless but friendly. Mrs. W. T. Giddings, who grew up watching the lights and whose father claimed he was saved from a blizzard when the lights led him to the shelter of a cave, considers the lights to be curious observers, investigating things around them. Over the years many explanations for the lights have been offered, ranging from an electrostatic discharge, swamp gas, or moonlight shining on veins of mica, to ghosts of conquistadors looking for gold. The most plausible explanation is that the lights are an unusual phenomenon similar to a mirage, caused by an atmospheric condition produced by the interaction of cold and warm layers of air that bend light so that it is seen from a distance but not up close. In recent years the lights have become a tourist attraction. The Texas Department of Transportation constructed a roadside parking area nine miles east of Marfa on U.S. Highway 90 for motorists to view the curious phenomenon. The Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Center was built at that site in 2003.

Tsha Handbook →

Blackwell School

1892

By 1886, three years after the founding of Marfa, Texas, the town had a hotel, general store, saloon, newspaper, multiple churches, and a schoolhouse. The small two-room adobe schoolhouse served Anglo students and students of Mexican descent. As Marfa grew, development sprawled north of the railroad tracks. In 1892 the Marfa Independent School District (MISD) built a new two-story brick school building on the north side of town, north of the railroad tracks, and only moved Anglo students to the new school. According to Paul Wright, who authored a study on the racial segregation of Marfa's neighboring towns, Alpine and Fort Davis, the railroad tracks running through Alpine served as a "barrier that kept non-Anglos" from moving north. It remains unknown why school officials chose to keep students of Mexican descent at the original adobe schoolhouse, as no policy or law required their segregation from Anglo students. Nonetheless, MISD officials adopted a policy of segregation, one that prioritized and benefited Marfa's Anglo students. The original adobe schoolhouse quickly came to be known as the "Mexican School." In 1909, the same year that the Texas legislature passed school reform to create new school districts, expand access to schools, and establish curriculum past the eighth grade, MISD officials voted to further segregate students of Mexican descent by purchasing five lots south of the railroad tracks for $150 to construct a new Mexican school. A former teacher described the new Mexican school, locally known as the Ward School, as being a "three-room, adobe-plastered house with a belfry, coal house, and two outside toilets." In 1922 Jesse Blackwell became the Ward School's new principal. Born in December 1871 in Rusk County, Texas, Blackwell, at the age of fourteen, took responsibility for maintaining his family's 500-acre farm. Nevertheless, he managed to attend college during the summertime and began teaching in 1890. Blackwell taught at several schools across Texas until his path led him to Marfa. When he arrived at the Ward School, the school consisted of only a single building that served 120 students from the first to the eighth grade. During the course of twenty years, Blackwell transformed and expanded the school to accommodate the growing student population. During his tenure as principal, he established a Spanish-speaking interscholastic league for Mexican schools in the area, and he increased the school's curriculum and academic standards. By 1947, when Blackwell retired, the Ward School expanded from a single schoolhouse to a five-acre, four-building campus, which served more than 600 students of Mexican descent. In 1940 MISD honored Blackwell for his dedication and accomplishments by renaming the Ward School to Blackwell Junior High School. The Blackwell School's student enrollment during Blackwell's tenure reflects the larger trend of Mexican student enrollment in Texas during the twentieth century. From 1900 until 1928, the percentage of Mexican school-aged children enrolled in school grew from 17.3 percent to 49 percent. By 1942 the percentage of Mexican school-aged children reached 53 percent. However, a contributor to the growing number of Mexican children enrolled in school was the growing number of segregated Mexican schools. By the 1940s more than 120 school districts across Texas operated segregated schools for students of Mexican descent (see MEXICAN AMERICANS AND EDUCATION ). Despite the 1948 ruling of Delgado V. Bastrop Independent School District , which deemed segregated education of students of Mexican descent as unconstitutional, many school districts across Texas, including MISD, continued to operate segregated schools. In 1965, eleven years after Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , MISD closed the Blackwell School and relocated students of Mexican descent to the Anglo school. Following the closure of the Blackwell School, MISD sold off or demolished the vacant school buildings. In 1969 MI

Tsha Handbook →

Marfa Lights Viewing Area

1883

Unexplained glowing orbs have been reported in the desert east of Marfa since 1883. No scientific explanation has been universally accepted.

Historical Marker → · 4.6 mi away

Building 98, Fort D.A. Russell

1943

Constructed in 1920, Building 98 housed the Officers Club and Bachelor Officers Quarters for Fort D.A. Russell. During the latter years of World War II, from 1943 to 1945, German prisoners of war from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps were housed at the fort, and evidence of their ornate artwork can be found on the building's interior walls. Murals depict views from a courtyard and include scenes typical of west Texas. Constructed of adobe and concrete, Building 98 features a pebbledash finish and an A-shaped footprint, with one courtyard completely enclosed and another enclosed on three sides. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2004

Historical Marker →

Marfa Mystery Lights

1883

Unexplained lights observed near Marfa since at least 1883. Official viewing area located on US Highway 90 east of Marfa.

Historical Marker →

Things to Do in Marfa

quirky 0.3 mi away
The Marfa Mystery Lights

Out in the desert near Marfa since 1883 cowboys and ranchers have spotted strange glowing orbs dancing across the night sky. A young cowhand named Robert…
spooky 0.5 mi away
Marfa Ghost Lights

Mysterious lights have appeared in the desert outside Marfa since the 1880s. No one knows what causes them. Best seen from the official viewing platform on US…
quirky 0.6 mi away
Marfa Lights Viewing Area

Nobody knows what the Marfa Lights are. On dark nights mysterious glowing orbs appear over the desert south of Marfa hovering splitting merging and…
historical 20.8 mi away
Fort Davis and the Buffalo Soldiers

After the Civil War the Army garrisoned Fort Davis with Black troops the Comanche called Buffalo Soldiers. These men patrolled the most dangerous stretch of…
nature 21.8 mi away
Davis Mountains

The Davis Mountains are an eroded volcanic complex from thirty-five million years ago when this part of Texas was full of active calderas. The peaks are the…
quirky 21.9 mi away
The County Bigger Than Connecticut

Brewster County stretches across 6169 square miles of West Texas desert and mountain making it larger than the entire state of Connecticut. Alpine sits at its…
historical 22.0 mi away
Frank Hamer Started Here

Before Frank Hamer tracked down Bonnie and Clyde on a Louisiana backroad he was a young Texas Ranger stationed in Alpine. He joined the Rangers Alpine company…
historical 0.2 mi away
When Hollywood Took Over Marfa

In the summer of 1955 the biggest names in Hollywood descended on tiny Marfa to film Giant. James Dean Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson lived at the Hotel…
day trip
Day Trip to Marfa 🧑🏻‍🚀 (FULL EPISODE) S3 E9

Featured on The Daytripper — a full-episode local travel guide.

Everything Near Marfa

63 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Marfa Lights · Tsha Handbook

    The Marfa lights are often visible on clear nights between Marfa and Paisano Pass in northeastern Presidio County as one faces the Chinati Mountains. At times they appear colored as they twinkle in the distance. They…

  • Blackwell School · Tsha Handbook

    By 1886, three years after the founding of Marfa, Texas, the town had a hotel, general store, saloon, newspaper, multiple churches, and a schoolhouse. The small two-room adobe schoolhouse served Anglo students and…

  • No Country for Old Men · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through West Texas, the very landscape that inspired Cormac McCarthy's chilling novel, 'No Country for Old Men.' Released in 2007, this film, and its 2005 book, brought the stark beauty and inherent…

  • Marfa, TX · Tsha Handbook

    You're rolling through Marfa, Texas, a town born from the need for a drink... of water, that is! Back in 1883, the railroad needed a stop to refill its engines, and Marfa sprung up right here as a water stop and freight…

  • Brite, Lucas Charles II · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through West Texas, maybe near Marfa, and you're passing through the heart of cattle country. Right here, Lucas Charles Brite II wasn't just a rancher; he was a titan. After his brother died in 1885, Luke…

  • Fort D. A. Russell · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Marfa, Texas, a town that once played host to a vital U.S. Army post. It all started back in 1911, when fears of raids from the Mexican Revolution led the government to establish a military…

  • Lewis, Paul · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through West Texas right now, maybe near Marfa or Presidio. Back in the 1940s, this was the territory of Paul Lewis. He came here from Poland, bringing his family's textile business background with him.…

  • Building 98 POW Murals · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Marfa, Texas, and right here at the old Fort D. A. Russell, you can find a unique piece of World War II history. Building 98, originally built for officers' quarters and a mess hall, became home…

  • Dean, John M. [1852-1909] · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through West Texas, perhaps near Marfa. Back in the late 1800s, this area was a wild frontier, and John M. Dean was right in the middle of it. He arrived in Lee County in 1874, became a lawyer, and…

  • Madera Springs, TX · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Jeff Davis County, heading towards Marfa. Right here, you're passing the site of Madera Springs Resort. Built starting in 1926 by C.W. Starling, this 228-acre retreat was nestled high on Timber…

  • Hunter Gymnasium · 0.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Hunter Gymnasium in Marfa, built in 1940 with a significant grant from the Works Progress Administration. This unique building features plastered adobe infill walls, a rare material for its type,…

  • El Paisano Hotel · 0.2 mi · Scraped Hmdb

    Imagine staying in the very hotel that served as headquarters during the filming of the iconic movie 'Giant'! El Paisano Hotel in Marfa, Texas, was the place to be in the summer of 1955. For six weeks, the cast and crew…

Show all 63 nearby places
  • When Hollywood Took Over Marfa · 0.2 mi · Things to Do

    In the summer of 1955 the biggest names in Hollywood descended on tiny Marfa to film Giant. James Dean Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson lived at the Hotel…

  • The Marfa Mystery Lights · 0.3 mi · Things to Do

    Out in the desert near Marfa since 1883 cowboys and ranchers have spotted strange glowing orbs dancing across the night sky. A young cowhand named Robert…

  • Ghost of Hitler in the Desert · 0.3 mi · Things to Do

    The Marfa Lights have inspired some truly wild explanations over the years. Early settlers thought they were the ghost of a Chisos Apache warrior sealed in a…

  • An oil boom that never came · 0.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're rolling through Marfa, and right here is the historic El Paisano Hotel, completed back in 1930. It was built by the Gateway Hotel Company, hoping for an oil boom that never came. Designed by El Paso architects…

  • No Country for Old Marfa · 0.3 mi · Things to Do

    Marfa has been a Hollywood favorite since the 1950s but its most intense stretch came in 2007 when both No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood used the…

  • El Paisano Hotel · 0.3 mi · Historical Marker

    Named for the nearby Paisano Mountain pass, this structure was completed in 1930. Gateway Hotel Company, owners of several area hotels, built it in anticipation of a local oil boom that never materialized. The…

  • St. Paul's Episcopal Church · 0.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Marfa, and if you look closely, you might catch a glimpse of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, the oldest Protestant church in the Big Bend region. Its story starts back in 1883 with John and Mary…

  • Humphris-Humphreys House · 0.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Humphris-Humphreys House, built in 1883 by local builder Saturnino Naborette. This home represents traditional West Texas pioneer building methods, with a central hallway and four rooms on each…

  • The Fake Prada Store in the Desert · 0.4 mi · Things to Do

    In 2005 two Berlin artists built a perfect replica of a Prada boutique on a lonely highway outside Marfa complete with real handbags and right-footed-only…

  • The Lights Nobody Can Explain · 0.4 mi · Things to Do

    Folks around Fort Davis have watched mysterious lights dance above the desert floor since the 1880s. Rancher Robert Ellison first reported glowing orbs…

  • Presidio County Courthouse · 0.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Presidio County Courthouse in Marfa, a true landmark of the Big Bend. Look up and you can see its impressive dome, a beacon visible for miles across this vast landscape. Built in 1886, this…

  • Blackwell School · 0.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Blackwell School in Marfa. For decades, this building served hundreds of Hispanic children, teaching them English and burying their Spanish words in a mock funeral ceremony on campus. The school…

  • Named After a Russian Novel Nobody Read · 0.4 mi · Things to Do

    When the railroad came through in the 1880s this dusty water stop needed a name. The wife of a railroad executive suggested Marfa after a character in Jules…

  • The Two-Thousand-Dollar-a-Night Cow Town · 0.4 mi · Things to Do

    Marfa went from a dying ranching town to one of the most expensive zip codes in rural America thanks to art tourism. County property values jumped 254 percent…

  • Marfa Ghost Lights · 0.5 mi · Things to Do

    Mysterious lights have appeared in the desert outside Marfa since the 1880s. No one knows what causes them. Best seen from the official viewing platform on US…

  • Building 98 · 0.5 mi · Scraped Hmdb

    Imagine dancing where officers once did! This is Building 98, the former bachelor officer quarters, officers' club, and grand ballroom at Fort D. A. Russell. From 1911 to 1946, this building served as a social hub for…

  • Fort D. A. Russell · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Fort D.A. Russell, a place that's worn many hats since it opened as Camp Marfa in 1911. It started as a supply post for border patrols and a cavalry camp during the Mexican Revolution. During World…

  • German POWs Painted Cowboys They Never Saw · 0.5 mi · Things to Do

    During World War II about 200 German prisoners of war were held at Fort D.A. Russell in Marfa. Two of them a Luftwaffe glider pilot named Hans Press and an…

  • Marfa Lights Viewing Area · 0.6 mi · Things to Do

    Nobody knows what the Marfa Lights are. On dark nights mysterious glowing orbs appear over the desert south of Marfa hovering splitting merging and…

  • Building 98, Fort D.A. Russell · 0.6 mi · Historical Marker

    Constructed in 1920, Building 98 housed the Officers Club and Bachelor Officers Quarters for Fort D.A. Russell. During the latter years of World War II, from 1943 to 1945, German prisoners of war from Field Marshal…

  • The Artist Who Bought an Army Base · 0.6 mi · Things to Do

    In 1971 a New York minimalist sculptor named Donald Judd visited Marfa and never really left. He bought 340 acres of abandoned Fort D.A. Russell a…

  • James Buchanan Gillett · 0.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Marfa area, home to a legendary Texas Ranger: James Buchanan Gillett. Born in Austin in 1856, Gillett joined the Rangers at just 19, hunting down raiding Indians, rustlers, and feuding settlers.…

  • William Edward Russell · 0.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through the Marfa area, passing the site of a true Big Bend pioneer: William Edward Russell. A Kentucky native, Russell arrived in Texas in the 1850s and built a life here. He traded along the Chihuahua…

  • Fort D. A. Russell (Texas) · 1.0 mi · Scraped Hmdb

    Pull over for a minute and imagine cowboys and airplanes sharing the same dusty space. That's Fort D. A. Russell. Established as Camp Albert in 1911, it was a response to the growing unrest along the border, especially…

  • Marfa Lights Viewing Area · 1.0 mi · Things to Do

    Mysterious lights have been spotted in the desert here since the 1880s.

  • Presidio County · 1.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Presidio County, Texas, a place named for a military garrison. This county was officially formed way back in 1850, carved out of the vast Bexar County. Its primary purpose? To protect the Spanish…

  • Marfa Stockyards · 1.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through West Texas, and right here, you're passing the site of the Marfa Stockyards. Built in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1920</say-as> by the railroad, this place became the central hub for…

  • Marfa Mystery Lights · 1.8 mi · Historical Marker

    Unexplained lights observed near Marfa since at least 1883. Official viewing area located on US Highway 90 east of Marfa.

  • The Mystery of the Marfa Lights · 3.7 mi

    Just east of town on Highway 90, you'll find an official viewing area dedicated to Marfa’s most famous and baffling phenomenon: the Marfa Lights. The first documented sighting was in 1883 by a young cowhand named Robert…

  • Donald Judd's Concrete Vision · 3.7 mi

    The Marfa you see today is largely the invention of one man: Donald Judd. A leading figure in minimalist art, Judd grew disillusioned with the New York art scene in the 1970s. He wanted a place where his work, and the…

  • Marfa, TX · 3.7 mi

    Before the railroad snaked its way through this high desert, this land belonged to others. For centuries, indigenous peoples knew these mountains and plains, long before the surveyors arrived. Then came the Galveston,…

  • Ballroom Marfa · 3.7 mi

    The building that holds Ballroom Marfa has been a silent-movie house and a dance hall since the 1920s. Virginia Lebermann and Fairfax Dorn took it over in 2003 and turned it into a contemporary art space — one that…

  • Flying Island music festival · 3.7 mi

    When the Trans-Pecos festival left a hole in Marfa's calendar, Matthew Bolick filled it. He put together the first Flying Island festival last October — four months of scrambling, twenty bands, and about six hundred…

  • Los Yonke Gallos de Marfa versus Texas Playboys · 3.7 mi

    Out on the east side of Marfa, at Vizcaino Park, they play sandlot baseball — real sandlot, two homegrown clubs that have been at it more than fifteen years: Los Yonke Gallos de Marfa and the Texas Playboys. And because…

  • Trans-Pecos Festival of Music + Love at El Cosmico · 3.7 mi

    A mile south of Marfa, out in the high desert, there's a music festival that started before there was even a hotel to host it. In 2006, Austin hotelier Liz Lambert threw a party on a property she was still building into…

  • When Hollywood Came for 'Giant' · 3.7 mi

    For a few months in 1955, remote Marfa became the epicenter of Hollywood. Director George Stevens brought his epic 'Giant' out here, using the ranch country outside town to stand in for the sprawling Reata spread. The…

  • The Science of the Lights · 3.7 mi

    People have been watching the Marfa Lights a long time. The first account we have goes back to 1883, when a cowhand named Robert Reed Ellison, driving cattle through Paisano Pass, saw a light flickering out on the flats…

  • The Fort Before the Art · 3.7 mi

    Before the Chinati Foundation, this was a working army post, and it had several lives. It began in 1911 as Camp Albert, thrown up when the Mexican Revolution alarmed Presidio County, with cavalry troops on the ground…

  • Marfa Lights Viewing Area · 4.6 mi · Historical Marker

    Unexplained glowing orbs have been reported in the desert east of Marfa since 1883. No scientific explanation has been universally accepted.

  • Site of Alamito · 6.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through the historic Alamito area, a place active since prehistoric times. Spanish explorers passed through in the 1500s, and Mexican families settled here by 1715, ranching despite Apache raids. By the…

  • Pioneer Cemetery · 8.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Pioneer Cemetery in Fort Davis, a final resting place for many early settlers. Look for the graves of Mr. and Mrs. Diedrick Dutchover, immigrants whose unusual surname, given by a Mexican War…

  • Marfa Lights · 8.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through West Texas, and if you keep your eyes peeled tonight, you might see 'em. The Marfa Lights! For over a hundred years, these mysterious, unexplained lights have danced across the horizon. Rancher…

  • Site of Marfa Army Air Field · 9.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Marfa, and right here, back in World War II, was the Marfa Army Air Field. Established in 1942, it was a crucial advanced multi-engine flying school. At first, they struggled with supplies and…

  • The Volcano Under Highway 90 · 12.6 mi

    That gap in the mountains ahead, Paisano Pass, sits inside a volcano. Not a cone -- a collapsed one. About thirty-five million years ago, in the late Eocene, a magma chamber under here emptied out fast enough that the…

  • Pasiano Pass · 12.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Presidio County, somewhere near Marfa, and you're passing Pasiano Pass. Legend says two Spaniards met here and greeted each other with "Mi Paisano," meaning "My Countryman." This spot has a long…

  • The West Texas Highway Aimed at the Pacific · 13.7 mi

    La Entrada al Pacifico is the name Texas gave in nineteen ninety seven to a chain of West Texas highways: State Highway Three Forty Nine out of Lamesa, a stretch of Interstate Twenty, U S Three Eighty Five from Odessa…

  • Point of Rocks Roadside Park · 15.7 mi

    These rounded blocks may look like granite, but the rock is more accurately called syenite. Syenite forms deep underground from slowly cooling magma, which gives it crystals large enough to see. Unlike ordinary granite,…

  • The Pilot Factory of West Texas · 17.6 mi · Things to Do

    During World War II the Marfa Army Air Field trained thousands of pilots in the clear desert skies above the Chianti Mountains. The base was massive for a town…

  • Bloys Camp Meeting · 17.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through West Texas, and you might just be passing the site of a tradition that's been going strong since 1890: the Bloys Camp Meeting. Founded by Presbyterian minister W.B. Bloys, this annual gathering…

  • Musquiz, Manuel · 19.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the ruins of a pioneer ranch home. This was the place of Manuel Musquiz, who settled out here in 1854. But life on the frontier was tough. Indian raids forced Musquiz to abandon his home. Later,…

  • Davis Mountains Indian Lodge · 20.0 mi · Historical Marker

    At five thousand feet in the Davis Mountains, young men from the Civilian Conservation Corps built a pueblo-style lodge out of adobe and local stone during some of the darkest years of the Great Depression. The CCC was…

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