The Marfa Lights

Nine miles east of the town of Marfa, in the high desert of far West Texas, there’s a roadside rest stop with a difference.

It has restrooms and a parking lot, like any other. But it also has a low stone wall facing south, a row of mounted viewing scopes, and a set of interpretive signs. And every night, after the sun goes down, people gather there in the dark and look out across a wide, empty plain called Mitchell Flat toward the distant Chinati Mountains.

They’re looking for the Marfa Lights.

The Cowboy

According to the most often repeated story, the first person to report the lights was a young cowboy named Robert Reed Ellison, in 1883.

Ellison was driving cattle through the area, near Paisano Pass, when he saw a flickering light in the distance one night. He thought at first it might be an Apache campfire, and worried about raiders. When he and the other cowhands rode out to investigate, they found no campfire, no ashes, nothing at all. Other settlers, he was told, had seen the lights too, and had never found a source.

That account was published decades later, after Ellison’s death. Historians note that there’s no record of it from the time. But it has become the founding story of the Marfa Lights.

What People See

The lights are described in many different ways. Most often, they’re glowing orbs, white, yellow, orange or red, that appear low on the horizon, somewhere out on the flat desert between the viewing area and the mountains. They might hover in place, flicker, pulse, drift side to side, split into two or merge into one, rise up, or suddenly vanish. Sometimes they appear one at a time. Sometimes several appear at once, dancing around each other.

Witnesses say they can’t judge how far away the lights are. They might be a few hundred yards off. They might be miles. People have tried to drive or walk toward them. They never seem to get any closer.

Over the years, the lights have been reported by ranchers, travelers, pilots and soldiers stationed at a World War II airfield near Marfa, where pilots in training reportedly tried to chase them in planes.

The Explanations

Over the decades, people have offered many explanations for the lights.

Some of the legends are supernatural. The lights are said to be the ghosts of Apache warriors or of an Apache chief, Alsate, whose spirit was condemned to wander after he was betrayed and killed. Some say they’re the ghosts of conquistadors searching for gold. Some say they’re UFOs.

Scientists have proposed more down-to-earth explanations. Some believe the lights are a kind of mirage, caused by layers of cold and warm air over the desert bending the light from distant sources — stars, campfires, ranch lights, or car headlights — and making them appear to float and flicker. Others have proposed natural phenomena like ball lightning, glowing gases released from the ground, or piezoelectric effects from stress in the rocks.

In 2004, a group of physics students from the University of Texas at Dallas spent several nights observing the lights with equipment and coordinating with observers on the highway. They concluded that the lights they saw were almost all car headlights on U.S. 67, the highway running between Marfa and Presidio, seen from a great distance across the flat.

That explanation satisfied many people. It didn’t satisfy everyone. Defenders of the mystery point out that the lights were reportedly seen long before there were cars or highways in the area. And some witnesses describe lights that behave in ways car headlights never would.

The Town

Marfa itself is an unusual place. It’s a small town of fewer than two thousand people, surrounded by vast ranches, in one of the most remote parts of Texas. It was the filming location for the 1956 film Giant, with Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean. And since the 1970s, when the minimalist artist Donald Judd moved there and transformed old army buildings into a museum, it has become an international destination for art lovers.

But the lights are what put Marfa on the map for many people. Every year, the town holds the Marfa Lights Festival. In 2003, the Texas Department of Transportation built the official viewing center along U.S. 67.

Night on Mitchell Flat

If you go, be patient. Most nights, people see nothing at all, or they see lights that are clearly cars on the highway. Some nights, people see something they can’t explain.

Even if you don’t see anything, it’s worth the trip. The West Texas sky at night is one of the darkest and clearest in America, scattered with more stars than most people have ever seen. The desert is silent. The mountains are dark shapes on the horizon.

Standing there, it’s easy to understand why people have looked out at that empty plain for more than a century and wondered what was out there.