Terlingua

The name has belonged to three places. The first was a Mexican village on Terlingua Creek three miles above the Rio Grande; when the Marfa and Mariposa mining camp took the name, the old village became Terlingua Abaja. After that mine closed in May 1910, the post office moved ten miles east to the Chisos company camp. The village stayed segregated, Mexican families east of the company store and Anglos to the west. The company went bankrupt on October 1, 1942, and in 1967 the Chili Appreciation Society named Terlingua the chili capital of the world.

What the plaque says

Terlingua 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)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Terlingua Ghost Town — 0.6 mi
  The stone shells of the Chisos Mining Company's quicksilver camp west of Study Butte, where a Chicago owner made a fortune from a mine he seldom came to see.
• Big Bend Ranch State Park — 9.6 mi
  The largest park in the Texas system, more than 300,000 acres of volcanic desert and river canyon west of Big Bend, bought from a working ranch in 1988.
• Santa Elena Canyon — 10 mi
  The Rio Grande's 1,500-foot-deep slot through limestone at the west end of Big Bend National Park, reached by a short trail at the end of the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive.
• Castolon Historic District — 14 mi
  An army camp built in 1919 for the Mexican Revolution and never really used, which became La Harmonia's trading post for families on both sides of the river until 1961.

More markers nearby

• Federico Villalba — 0.4 mi
• Comanche Trail — 35 mi