Historical Marker
Culberson County
Van Horn, Culberson County · Texas
Erected 1936
Culberson County covers 3,815 square miles, from flats near 3,000 feet to the highest ground in Texas. Besides the Guadalupes it holds the Delaware, Beach, Wylie, Sierra Diablo, Van Horn, Apache and Baylor ranges, country that gave Indian peoples protection and a remote base. Its rocks yield dolomite, gypsum, limestone, salt, silver, copper, lead, zinc, barite and molybdenum. Rain averages ten inches a year, the growing season 224 days, and less than 1 percent of the land counts as prime farmland. New Mexico borders it on the north.
What the plaque says
Culberson County Formed from El Paso County; Created March 10, 1911; Organized April 18, 1911; Named for David B. Culberson 1830-1903 famous constitutional lawyer, a Confederate officer, member of the Texas legislature, member of the United States congress; Van Horn, the county seat.
Where it stands
31.03888, -104.89718 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Hotel El Capitan — 3.9 miHenry Trost's Spanish Revival hotel of 1930 in Van Horn, named for the cliff at the end of the Guadalupe Mountains, restored and back in business as an inn.