Marfa Lights Viewing Area

The official Marfa Lights Viewing Area is a roadside stop on US 90, nine miles east of Marfa on the way to Alpine. The Texas Department of Transportation built the parking area for motorists, and the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Center stands on it, looking out over the open plain toward the Chinati Mountains. It is free and open to anyone driving by: pull off the highway, park and face the mountains.

Come after dark on a clear night and plan to wait. Visit Marfa places the lights on the horizon southeast of town, over country that is nearly uninhabited and very hard to cross, which is why most people watch from this pull-off. When they show, they may be red, blue or white, and they turn up at random through the night in any season. Some nights nothing appears at all, and the wide dark plain and the sky above it are the whole show.

That sky is part of the reason to stop. Marfa lies inside the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve, which covers more than 15,000 square miles of Texas and Mexico and depends on night-friendly lighting. Give your eyes time to adjust, park with your headlights off, and keep flashlights and phone screens low and pointed down for the people beside you.

The viewing center sits beside the site of Marfa Army Air Field, a World War II flying school; its state historical marker stands next to the center. In town, the Visit Marfa visitor center is at 302 S. Highland Ave., and the Marfa Lights Festival brings music, food, vendors and a parade to Marfa each year around Labor Day weekend.