Cookies In Terlingua

     My friend and Ann's cousin, Tom Shortt of Alpine, invited me to the Cookie Chill-Off held March 3 in Terlingua (tur LING gwah), Texas's most famous and liveliest ghost town. It was a pleasant day.

    Terlingua is located deep in the Big Bend a few miles from the Rio Grande and the west gate of present day Big Bend National Park. It was born in the 1890s as a mercury mining town, owned lock,

ROAD TO TERLINGUA - Passing clouds throw shadow

patterns on Rte 118, the road from Alpine straight south to

Terlingua. Most of it is like this, 70 miles of arid ranchland

with almost no sign of humans nor cattle. A trustworthy

vehicle, full gas tank and drinking water are advisable.

Fortunately, the speed limit is usually 70 or 75 mph.

stock and barrel by the Chisos Mining Company, which in turn was owned by a man named Howard E. Perry from Portland ME. Perry and a handful of hired American-born engineers, supervisors, clerks and storekeepers and one doctor ruled over the mines and town and the nearly 2,000 Mexicans who worked and lived there until 1942 when it was sold. The buyers operated it another three years after which it closed due to mineshaft flooding, and Terlingua soon became a ghost town.

GHOST CHURCH - This long abandoned Terlingua church

was one of the many amenities in the Chisos Mining Co.

owned town. There were well provisioned stores, a movie

theatre, school, farms to provide fresh food, festivals and

dances, a cemetery, even a jail. Terlingua was nearly 70

miles by wagon road to the nearest railroad, so it had to

be pretty self-suffcient. The majestic Chisos Mountains

are in the distances behind the church. The Chisos are

a large mountain range, up 7,800 ft. high, entirely

contained in, yet only a minor part of, gigantic Big Bend

National Park.

     Over the ensuing years, of course, the town built mostly of adobe slowly crumbled, but large areas of it remain as ruins. Also over the years, a small community of independent minded desert rats took up residence, some in little houses they built, mobile homes or even fixing up an adobe ruin. With the opening and increasing popularity of next door Big Bend National Park, it has become a tourist town. A few people retire there and some keep second homes there. These late comers have rehabilitated a surprising number of the ruined adobes. Now the town is an odd scattering of mostly struggling restaurants, bars, unusual little stores, camgrounds, even a bank amongst a few miles Terlingua adobe ruins.

     As might be expected with so many independent spirits living in a spirit town, there are lots of interesting and humorous stories. One of my favorite involves the Starlight Theatre, which is a popular rough and ready bar that attracts surprisingly good entertainers considering Terlingua's remoteness. The bar was actually a movie theatre built when the Chisos Mining Company owned the town. When the town went ghost, the theatre was abandoned and fell to ruin, most notably in that the roof fell in. Nonetheless, the handful of desert rats that lived among the ruins took to watching movies in the old, now roofless theatre. Thus the name: Starlight Theatre. Eventually the Starlight was bought by an entrepreneur who turned it into a bar with occasional entertainment. As is often the case in Terlingua, if not all of West Texas, the new business was not richly capitalized and had to "make do" with certain things. A new roof was put on the place, but the sloping movie house floor was left as is. A bar was built in the middle of the place, but in order to make it level it was waist high at one end and chin high at the other. I was told the sloping floor and inversely elevated bar were fairly confounding to many drunks.

     Terlingua is home to the internationally famous Terlingua Chili Cook-Off each November. It draws thousands of chili heads, which I can't imagine because I doubt there are as many a 100 motel rooms combined in Terlingua, pop. 58, and nearby Study (STOODY) Butte, pop. 233). There actually is a serious chili cooking contest at the center of it all, two competing contests in fact, but the vast majority of the crowd is there to ride motorcycles, drink, whoop it up and sleep wherever they drop. Many Terlingua residents hide until its over.

     Which brings us to the Cookie Chill-Off. In answer to the famous, mobbed chili cook-off, the people of Terlingua, just for themselves, are now holding a dessert contest with a name that plays off the international event. It is was held in the Boathouse, a bar that did, indeed, used to be boathouse for a Rio Grande River outfitter. An L shaped bar now sits on the concrete floor where boat trailers and other river gear used to be stored. There is an overhead garage door that is opened to let in fresh air and a view of the mountains. Oars, ropes, a kayak or two and other accoutrements from the building's previous life hang from the rafters or lay about haphazardly.

     A big crowd for a ghost town, about 80 people attended, including a the local Justice of the Peace, which in Texas is a real judge. Everyone dressed casually as if they had just come from working on the lawn, except there aren't any lawns. In his salad days Tom lived in Terlingua for a few years, and he still has a sturdy and spacious one-room cabin there. He knew lots of the folks at the Chill-Off, and I enjoyed meeting them. There were about eight dessert entries in the Chill-Off, they were taste tested by the bar customers and the winners named. Everything ran about an hour late, which Tom explained is considered dead on time in Terlingua. Then it was back to beer drinking, strumming guitars inside and out, singing along, lots of friendly conversation, horse shoes and - would you believe? - bocce ball. All of this and a beautiful mid 70s afternoon made for a mellow, perfectly enjoyable time.

     I was very surprised at the make-up of the crowd. I expected to see mostly wrinkled, dried up old desert characters, but nay nay. At least half of them were very fit and attractive young people in their 20s. Friendly and laid back. I suspect a lot of them were doing an "Into The Wild" sort of fling to "find themselves". Just not ready to settle down. Among the crowd I was very surprised to meet a young couple from Maine. She had just graduated from Bates College and was able to talk intelligently about the pros and cons of Sam's versus Luiggi's Italian sandwiches. She was also knowledgable about Fergies, but unfortunately did not have any with her. Her boyfriend reminded me of our own Mike Smith, big, easy going and likable. They are from Boothbay Harbor where he guides sea kayak trips in the summer. In the winter he becomes a guide on various southern rivers. I had a great time talking with them.

DESERT BOATHOUSE - Terlingua is home to three river outfitting and guide services who peddle trips through the three nearby deep, narrow and winding canyons of the Rio Grande. The outfit that put up this building sold out and now the building is a bar. It is even rougher looking inside than it is outside, but it is loaded Telingua atmosphere and, the day I was there, with laid back friendly local folks, as many women as men, and several dogs that were just as friendly and laid back as their owners. An overhead garage door on the back of the building is opened on nice days to let in clean dessert air and a view of the mountains.

PARTYING AMIDST RUINS - The 50 or so people and modern day Terlingua business reside amidst the ruins of the old mining ghost town, which was virtually all built of stone or adobe. The ruins dot and in some places crowd the landscape over a couple of miles. Indeed, there is roofless ruin in the parking lot of the bar, about 50 ft. from the front door. Everyone simple parks around it and occasionally chucks dead soldiers into it as if it were a big ol' trash can. The picture above is one of several ruined homes located across the street from the Boathouse, which can be seen on the horizon at right. (If you look carefully through the bush beside the house, you can see my van parked outside the bar with the folks.) The picture below was taken from the Boathouse parking lot looking across the street. The house on the left is built of local stone, the one on the right of adobe. It's easy to see which one last longest. The Chisos Mountain range is in the background.