T E X A R R A K I S

The land in question is a 5.152 acre chunk of land. To give you an idea of how large five acres is, it is about the size of three city blocks, or two and a half football fields. 224,421 square feet. It is, a shitload of land, at least for our purposes.

the van horn mountain range to the west
the chispa mountains to the east

 It is located in Culberson County, Texas, in what is known as Lobo Valley, sandwiched between the Van Horn mountain range, Chispa mountain, and the further away Davis mountains southwards. Fifteen miles west is the Rio Grande and the Mexican border. This area is rich in history, pictographs and artifacts litter the area, from the paleo-americans six to ten thousand years ago as they streamed down trans-pecos, down chispa creek through lobo valley, as well as Apache artifacts, who arrived on the scene about six hundred years ago. All of this is littered on a bed of precambrian geology, on layers of fossils from the mesozoic and cenozoic eras.

a pictograph near the van horn mountain range, image facing the chispa mountains.

The parcel of land sits in the Chihuahuan desert, which straddles the US/Mexican border. Within that, it sits in the Trans-Pecos region of this desert, which is a distinct region boxed in by the Pecos river to the east, the Rio Grande to the east, and the 32nd parallel to the north. 4000 ft above sea level, Lobo Valley is not dead; according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Chihuahuan desert may be the most biologically diverse desert in the world.

the chihuahuan desert boundaries

Neighboring towns of Van Horn and Marfa proudly support thriving art communities, and plenty of interesting people live in the area. There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men were both filmed in and around Marfa. North of Van Horn, Jeff Bezos is constructing his spaceport, for his commercial space venture, Blue Origin.

The climate varies throughout the year. In the winter months, daytime temps average in the upper 50s or low 60s, while in the summer months they average in the high 80s to low 90s (although it can get much hotter!). When the sun sets, there is generally a drop in temperature of about 30 degrees, which can make even the hottest of summer nights feel pretty cold. The spring and fall months are very temperate, with temps in the 70s and 80s. On average, it rains about 11 inches a year.

Here are some external resources about this magnificent area of far west Texas:

Town of Van Horn
Van Horn Advocate
Ran Horn's Van Gogh Gallery
Lobo, Texas
John Hollister's Herping the Trans Pecos