West Texas

Recipes|
April 20, 2016

The Chilton

West Texas’s claim on this fizzy, lemony cocktail is unprovable? We’ll drink to that.

Travel & Outdoors|
January 9, 2014

Afraid of Losing the Dark

The McDonald Observatory, celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary this year, forges ahead with groundbreaking research and crusades to keep the night skies of West Texas pristine and unadulterated.

Art|
October 21, 2013

What Is Art?

When Playboy Enterprises—yes, that Playboy Enterprises—erected a forty-foot-tall sculpture near Marfa, it was convinced the town would appreciate its take on the local art scene. Instead it started a revealing debate.

Texas History|
January 21, 2013

When the Sky Ran Dry

Bad as the current drought is, it has yet to match the most arid spell in Texas history. Nearly two dozen survivors of the fifties drought remember the time it never rained.

History|
January 21, 2013

The Writing on the Wall

The Lower Pecos River rock paintings were created four thousand years ago by a long-forgotten people. But their apparent message may be as useful today as it was then: Follow the water.

Feature|
January 21, 2013

Home on the Range?

Texas Parks and Wildlife has embarked on an ambitious plan to restore the desert bighorn sheep population in Big Bend Ranch State Park. To accomplish this goal, the department has had to make hard choices about which animals live, which animals die, and what truly belongs in the Trans-Pecos.

The Wanderer|
September 6, 2012

Choose Your Own Texas Adventure

The first column I wrote for Texas Monthly appeared in the March 2000 issue. The article was titled “Voting Rites,” and I argued that the Voting Rights Act, which Lyndon Johnson had proposed to a joint session of Congress 35 years earlier, was the greatest accomplishment of his

The Wanderer|
August 27, 2012

Marathon: Get Outta Town

For many travelers, this far West Texas town is a last-chance pit stop before heading south to brave the wilds of Big Bend National Park. But, this past spring, after driving 407 miles (that’s roughly 7 hours and 143 country songs) from Austin to

The Wanderer|
August 27, 2012

Marfa: Trans-Pecos Gathering of Music + Love

In one of my favorite descriptions of Marfa, writer David McDannald points out that sometimes it’s “a shadow of a town” and sometimes it’s “a desert Mardi Gras.” At the end of this month, West Texas’s buzziest destination will be lit up like Bourbon Street on

The Culture|
July 31, 2011

Cowgirl Up

The word probably makes you think of rhinestone-studded jeans, floppy-brimmed hats, and Nashville queens, but “cowgirl” ought to stand for the tough pioneer women who built ranches and went on cattle drives and the hardy rural women who are out there today doing their fair share of the work, usually invisibly,

Eat My Words|
December 4, 2008

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

In January, the Gage Hotel, which is one of my all-time favorite romantic destinations in West Texas (well, the rooms in the Los Portales section are, not the ones with the bathrooms down the hall in the historic building–not so romantic running into some unknown dude in his

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