Toyah

Duane's take

Here's what the marker out on this stretch of Reeves County road has to say, and I'll tell it the way it deserves to be told. Way out in the Chihuahuan scrub, where the ground is more thirst than dirt, a little place called Toyah blinked into existence in 1881. The Texas and Pacific Railway needed a division point, and so Toyah became exactly that — complete with shops, a roundhouse, a hotel, and a cafe.

The whole civilized package, dropped right there in the middle of a landscape that seemed to be daring it to survive. And here's the thing about survival in that country — water. There wasn't any.

Not locally, anyway. Every barrel of water Toyah needed was hauled in from Monahans and sold, barrel by barrel, to whoever needed it badly enough to pay. Think about that next time you turn on a tap.

Meanwhile, if you needed to get somewhere a stage road could reach, Toyah was your launching point — passengers and mail alike headed out on the stage to Brogado. By 1882 the cattle shipping business had found Toyah too, which meant cowboys, which meant cattle, which sometimes meant rustlers. And rustlers, well — rustlers had a way of attracting a particular kind of attention.

That year, a cowboy-detective by the name of Charles Siringo rode into town, and he wasn't there for the hotel or the cafe. He was there looking for rustlers. Toyah: born as a railway division point in the desert, selling water by the barrel, sending mail by stage, and drawing detectives like the country itself had something to hide.

What the marker says

Began as division point, 1881, on T. & P. Railway, with shops, roundhouse, hotel, cafe. Water was hauled from Monahans and sold by the barrel. Stage took passengers and mail to Brogado. 1882 cattle shipping brought cowboy-detective Charles Siringo here to look for rustlers. (1964)