2006/01 Southwest USA trip (MN-TX) - Madera Canyon |
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From Study Butte we set off west, now back on the River Road that follows the Rio Grande to Presidio. This section is called “Farm Road 170”, and it’s quite good blacktop. We intended to camp at Big Bend Ranch but our first stop was at the “ghost town” of Terlingua. Originally Terlingua was a lively mining town, turning cinnabar ore into mercury. Its boom times were during the two world wars when there was a great demand from the military for mercury, but the mine closed soon after WW2 and 
Terlingua died with it. A few hermits stayed on as it crumbled into a ghost town, but then it became a spot for tourism and moviemaking, and businesses moved in to capitalize on this. So now it’s a tourist trap with fragments of ghost town ruins around it. It would have been better to build the new stuff on the edge of the town, but I doubt if there was any planning at the time. The original houses were built with adobe brick with tin roofs, and most have lasted quite well, only melting where exposed. The climate is so dry that even wooden decks are still sturdy. We found this roadrunner scavenging in amongst the ruins.
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Terlingua roadrunner (0.56) |
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The cemetery is an interesting mix of fancy adobe tombs and little heaps of rock with wooden crosses. Many of 
the graves still had offerings from last November’s Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, the day when the families come to have a party with their dead relatives.. There were candles, candy canes, toys, and even a few (unopened) cans of Bud.
It was 85 degrees when we left Terlingua, and we were pleased that we’d done our mining the previous day. The next place on the road is Lajitas, a complex of expensive-looking resorts in the desert, not of any interest to us. It is however, the gateway to Big Bend Ranch state park. The park was originally one of those giant Texan ranches, the Sauceda. Financial problems and some shady dealing ended with it being bought by the state of Texas about ten years ago. The ranger at the entrance station was bewailing the cost and the limited resources they have to manage the park, but it sounded an interesting place to us, and we paid for a night’s camping. We also asked about camping in the wilderness area in the interior and the ranger tried to put us off with “Very bad roads, no facilities”. I don’t think this ranger was one to range very far from his comforts.
Just up the road is Contrabanda, a Mexican village nestled between the river and some red rock and magnificent craggy mountains. It looks like a perfect picture and that’s what it is, a movie set. All the buildings are fakes, including the church, which has a note inside asking people not to use the fireplace for fires as it’s made out of wood! It is however a very photogenic spot. I asked another ranger later about the name “Contrabanda” and he explained that the name came from the days when the Mexicans smuggled wax into the USA. Apparently the Mexican government fixed the price of everything, including wax from the candelilla plant. The local Mexicans found that they could get a much better price by smuggling the wax across the border. The US Army was using it to waterproof their canvas tents.
We were camping at Madera Canyon, all by ourselves again, just off the road and on the bank of the Rio Grande. There was a small rapid just upstream of us, so we were camping to the sound of rushing water, a rare sound in the desert.
Friday January 20th
Despite being down by the river, the temperature still dived into the 30s. In the morning, the canyon was full of birds, most of which were new to us. One was a grayish version of the blood-red cardinal we see in Minnesota. For some reason, this quite pretty bird has been saddled with the name Pyrrhuloxia.