Texas People, Texas Places: More Musings of the Rambling Boy

53. The Road to the Mine

✥ 53 ✥ The Road to the Mine Hist o rian s use many gateways to enter the past. Some study treaties and diplomatic history; some wars and military history ; some, agriculture and trade and the evolution of settlement. Some even study the development of roads and highways. This past month I joined that last group and spent a good deal of time in the Marfa courthouse looking into the history of roads in Presidio County, and it has given me a totally new perspective on the history of the Big Bend. The Mother Road of the Big Bend was the Chihuahua Trail, the wagon road from San Antonio to Chihuahua City that wound from water hole to water hole across West Texas until it turned southward at Burgess Water Hole (now Kokernot Park in Alpine) and followed the course of Alamito Creek to Presidio del Norte (now Ojinaga) on the Rio Grande. That road was laid out by American merchants in Chihuahua City in 1839, and the segment of it that ran down the valley of Alamito Creek eventually became the main road from Marfa to Presidio. That segment is now the Casa Piedra Road. Most of the other roads in Presidio County’s road network originally branched off from it. The road that I have been spending most of my time on is one of those branches. When it was built in 1900, it was called the Marfa-Terlingua Freight Road, and it was the longest and most expensive road built to that date in Presidio County. It left the Marfa-Presidio road about halfway to Presidio and wound eastward across the desert past San Jacinto Mountain, then turned south across Bandera Mesa and the western edge of the Solitario and 208 ✥ down into and through Fresno Canyon. At the mouth of Fresno Canyon it turned east again and ended at the Marfa and Mariposa Mining Company’s mercury mine, about eight miles west of Terlingua. It was sixty miles long and it cost $1877.50 to build. Its only purpose was to serve the mine, which was owned by Presidio County ranchers James Normand, Tom Goldby, and Montroyd Sharp. The Presidio County Commissioners’ Court minutes reveal that when the road was built James Normand was the county commissioner from Precinct 2, and he persuaded the County Commission to appropriate $1557.50 in county funds for its construction . This was supplemented by $320.00 in private subscription , probably from the mining company. The contract for construction went to Tom Goldby. I am not implying that there was any hanky-panky involved; that was just the way things were done in those days. People ran for county commissioner to look out for their own interests. In 1900, the largest mercantile store in Marfa was Murphy and Walker, which occupied most of the city block where Livingston’s is now. Murphy and Walker supplied the Marfa and Mariposa mine with groceries, hardware, merchandise for the mine’s commissary , mining machinery, and whatever else was needed, and they received the heavy flasks of mercury that were shipped back to be loaded on the railroad. Everything destined for the mine, and the mercury flasks, moved along the Marfa-Terlingua Freight Road in heavy Studebaker wagons designed to carry eight thousand pounds of freight each. The wagons were drawn by teams of six and sometimes twelve mules, harnessed two abreast at the wagon tongue and four abreast in front. The drivers rode on the mule nearest the left-hand wheel and operated the wagon’s brake with a rope, one end of which was tied to the top of the brake handle; the other end was tied around the driver’s saddle horn. The brake handle was counterweighted with a heavy piece of iron tied to it. The ✥ 209 iron dragged in the road behind the wagon, leaving a trail in the dust. Unkind people said the trail was used by the freighters to find their way back to Marfa from the mine. The heavily loaded wagons moved very slowly, usually taking about eight days to make the hundred-mile trip from Marfa to the mine, with the drivers camping out overnight along the road. A waybill in the Archives of the Big Bend for a wagonload of goods shipped to the mine from Murphy and Walker bears a sarcastic notation from whoever received the shipment. “Team galloped in at noon dead beat...