The Marfa Lights

Tough to get to. Tougher to explain. But once you get here, you get it. Marfa, the county seat of Presidio County, is at the junction of US Highway 90 and 67 in the northeastern part of the county. It was established in 1883 as a water stop and freight headquarters for the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway. Fittingly named after a character in a novel, Marfa has a history of attracting creative spirits. Reportedly, the wife of a railroad executive suggested the name MARFA from Fyoder Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which she was reading at the time. Marfa is in an area that has been called one of the last American frontiers. It is situated at an altitude of 4,830 feet above sea level in a semiarid region with many dry streambeds that the summer thunderstorms fill and further erode. To the north are the Davis Mountains, to the southeast the Chios Mountains, and to the southwest the Chinati Mountains. Marfa lays semi protected within these escarpments on a great highland plain known as the Marfa Plateau.