Reeves County-Pecos, Texas

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Flat land. Arid land.

Grassy land stretching out under a wide Texas sky, with the Pecos River running through it and springs bubbling up in the Toyah Valley offering just enough water to make a person think, now maybe, just maybe, something could grow here. And turns out, people have been thinking exactly that for a long, long time. The Yuma Indians are thought to have done irrigated farming right here in the sixteenth century.

Let that sink in. Centuries before anyone was laying railroad track across this country, somebody already figured out the water situation and put it to work. Then came the Mexicans, raising vegetables and grain.

Quiet, steady work in a land that does not make anything easy. By the 1870s, the cattlemen moved in, as cattlemen tend to do, and the character of the place shifted again. Then in 1882, the Texas and Pacific Railway opened its route to El Paso right through this territory, and that changed everything.

Farmers, merchants, mechanics, they all came and settled in Pecos City and Toyah. The kind of people who look at flat, arid, grassy land and see possibility instead of hardship. Large-scale irrigated agriculture got going around 1900.

And then, in 1935, something that still stands as singular to this day. The only dam on the Pecos River in all of Texas was built right here in Reeves County. The only one.

And if the river and that dam are not enough, privately owned deep wells are also used, pulling water up from whatever the earth is willing to give. Layer after layer of people, century after century, all of them working out the same stubborn question: how do you make this land bloom. Reeves County kept answering.

What the marker says

Flat, arid, grassy land with a moderate water supply from the Pecos River and springs in Toyah Valley. Yuma Indians are thought to have done irrigated framing her in 16th century. Mexicans later raised vegetables, grain. Cattlemen moved in during the 1870s. Texas & Pacific Railway opened route to El Paso in 1882. Farmers, merchants, mechanics settled in Pecos City and Toyah. County was irrigated agriculture began about 1900. Only dam on Pecos River in Texas was built in this county 1935. Privately owned deep wells are also used. (1967)