Terlingua

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it: and Terlingua's story deserves every word. Picture this: a crease in the Brewster County desert so remote that three different peoples (Comanche, Shawnees, and Apaches) once called the upper reaches of a single creek home. Mexican herders named that creek Terlingua.

Three Tongues. And the town that would rise on its banks would speak in many more than three before it was done. In 1890, somebody turned over the right rock and found cinnabar, the mother-ore of quicksilver, and just like that, Terlingua was on the map.

Not just the Texas map. The world's map. By 1922, this hard-scrabble patch of Brewster County desert was producin forty percent of the entire nation's need for quicksilver.

The world's capital. Right here. Howard E.

Perry looked out over all of it from his two-story mansion, and what he saw below him was the Chisos Mining Company and a townsite humming with two thousand miners. Two thousand souls. They had a jail, because you need one of those.

They had a church, because you need one of those too. They had an ice cream parlor and a theater, which tells you something about how alive this place once was; people don't build theaters in towns they expect to quit. But towns can be undone by water and arithmetic.

The mine flooded. The price of the mineral fell. And after World War II, Terlingua died.

Just like that. The mansion still overlooks the valley, but now it overlooks silence. Three tongues, two thousand miners, one ghost town, and the desert keeps every secret it ever learned.

What the marker says

Famous Texas Ghost Town Terlingua With the mother-ore cinnabar strike in 1890, Terlingua became the world's quicksilver capital, yielding 40 percent of nation's need by 1922. Its name from Terlingua (Three Tongues) Creek nearby, was coined by Mexican herders. Comanche, Shawnees and Apaches lived on its upper reaches. Howard E. Perry's two-story mansion overlooked his Chisos Mining Company and townsite here, where 2,000 miners once used its jail, church, ice cream parlor, and theater. The mine flooded, mineral price fell and Terlingua died after World War II. (1966)