Jan 14 2025
Dep 8:30 0C
Arr 3:00 12 C
Time Diff - minus 2 hours from Toronto
Texas - New Mexico
We knew today would be a shorter drive and we would gain another hour so we meandered.
We were about 5 minutes away from the officially titled "University of Texas of the Permian Basin Stonehenge" which was built in the summer of 2004 by stoneworkers Connie and Brenda Edwards. The University thought that a nearly-full-size Stonehenge would make a good teaching tool -- and an alluring Druidic tourist attraction for the city.
Although the original Stonehenge took 2,000 years to complete, this one went up in only six weeks. Connie Edwards reportedly said at the time that he'd be happy just to build Stonehenges for the rest of his life.
Made of limestone slabs up to 19 feet tall and 20 tons apiece, Permian Basin Stonehenge is slightly shorter than the original, but it's exact in horizontal size and astronomically accurate. Although a plaque in front of the 'henge claims that the replica is "as it appears today in England," that's not exactly true. The slabs are blocky leftovers donated by a quarry, so they're approximations, not duplicates; the Stonehenge stands in a circle of reddish Texas gravel, not the green Salisbury Plain; and the Heel Stone, which marks the summer solstice, had to be stuck in the ground across a street.
Then we were on our way.
We stayed in Pecos in 2014. Click here for the post which includes Van Horn.
“When a bad man dies, he goes either to hell or to the Pecos.” ”
— Old buffalo hunter saying
The city is most recognized for its association with the local cultivation of cantaloupes.
We learned that the Pecos Boot Trail is a public art project comprised of 16 fiberglass boots decorated by local artists and displayed throughout town. We only got a few of them.
A replica of Judge Roy Bean’s saloon… the only law west of the Pecos.
Phantly Roy Bean Jr. (c. 1825 – March 16, 1903) was an American saloon-keeper and Justice of the Peace in Val Verde County, Texas, who called himself "The Only Law West of the Pecos". According to legend, he held court in his saloon along the Rio Grande on a desolate stretch of the Chihuahuan Desert of southwest Texas. After his death, fictional Western films and books cast him as a hanging judge, although he is known to have sentenced only two men to hang, one of whom escaped.
We wondered why the street was closed and noticed the collapse of the building on the far right.
This happened in December! The news story is here.
Unfortunately it is Monday so the museum was closed.
A striking resemblance!
Housing for workers.
Van Horn headline in the Fort Worth Star - Telegram.
One town, two frontiers: Inside tiny Van Horn, Texas — home to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin
This frontier community of 1,893 people that was once a rest stop for mail carriers going between El Paso and San Antonio now plays host to a new kind of traveler jetting to a new frontier: space. Jeff Bezos brought a media frenzy to the town when he picked a site less than 30 miles away for his Blue Origin rocket launches. But folks who call the town home say the engineers, space tourists and visitors who come to watch the rocket blasts haven’t changed Van Horn, where the streets are dusty, the buildings a testament to history and the people seemingly largely content with the lives they lead.
The fountain had frozen!
Hotel El Capitan was built in 1930 by the Gateway Hotel Chain, led by Charles Bassett, at the crossroads of the forthcoming Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe and Big Bend National Parks. The hotel was designed by famed architect Henry Trost and constructed by McKee Construction Company, all of El Paso. The building operated as a hotel until the late 1960’s. In 1973, soon after Interstate 10 opened and a majority of the traffic had bypassed the once popular landmark, it was converted into the Van Horn State Bank.In 2007, Lanna and Joe Duncan of Fort Davis purchased the building from the bank with the plan to convert it back into a hotel. The building is essentially the identical floor plan of its sister hotel, The Hotel Paisano, in Marfa, which is also owned by the Duncans. It was one of the five hotels built by the Gateway Hotels in Eastern New Mexico and West Texas. The other three hotels were located in Lordsburg and Carlsbad, New Mexico and downtown El Paso. Bassett built the hotels in an attempt to encourage tourism within 200 miles of El Paso. Trost was responsible for the design of over 550 buildings from California to Texas between the early 1900’s until his death in 1933. He studied architecture under Louis Sullivan in Chicago and was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Clark Hotel Museum is located in one of the oldest surviving buildings in Van Horn. When Culberson County was first created, the museum site served as the first courthouse. It then served as a hotel for nearly 40 years.
The town was named for the nearby Sierra Blanca Mountain, which was in turn named for the white poppies that grew there (sierra blanca is Spanish for "white mountain")/
The SB Historic Lodge in Sierra Blanca, Texas was built in 1939 and was previously known as the Sierra Historic Motel.
Las Cruces NM
Previous visits
HOTEL Hampton Inn
DINNER we picked up salads at Love.
BREAKFAST
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