Alpine & Marfa, Texas

Museum of the Big Bend Area

 

 

Holland Hotel

 

The original hotel was built in 1912 and has been restored to its magnificent Spanish Colonial Revival stylings along with a few modern amenities, but the Holland Hotel still offers that Texas hospitality and atmosphere of early Texas, including large rooms

 

 

Presidio County Courthouse - Built in 1886

 The courthouse can be seen from almost any location in Marfa. Designed of brick and stone quarried in Marfa, the exterior is of pink stucco with Lady Justice sitting atop the central dome.The tower is spanned by Roman arches. Interiors are designed of pecan wood.  

 

El Paisano Hotel

 is a historic hotel located in Marfa, Texas, The hotel opened in 1930. The hotel may be best known as the location headquarters for the Warner Bros film cast and crew who included: James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson among others for the film Giant for six weeks in the summer of 1955. 

 

 

This couple runs the Food Shark Outdoor Pavilion, along with a sit down restaurant and a late night Grilled Cheese Parlour on Friday and Saturday nights from 9:30pm to 1:00am

A funky little place. 

 

 

Check out the tumbleweeds blowing in the air

 

The Marfa Lights, mysterious glowing orbs that appear in the desert outside of town, have mystified people for generations. According to eyewitnesses, the Marfa Lights appear to be roughly the size of basketballs and are varyingly described as white, blue, yellow, red or other colors.  Reportedly, the Marfa Lights hover, merge, twinkle, split into two, flicker, float up into the air or dart quickly across Mitchell Flat (the area east of Marfa where they're most commonly reported).

 [The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]  

 This is just about how it happened the night we watched.

 

At 5,050 feet Fort Davis is the highest town in Texas.

One of the best remaining examples of a restored frontier military fort in the country dating back to the late 1800's.

 

McDonald Observatory

The McDonald Observatory was originally endowed by the Paris, Texas banker William McDonald (1844–1926), who left $850,000 - the bulk of his fortune - to the University of Texas to endow an astronomical observatory. The provision of the will was challenged by McDonald's relatives, but after a long legal fight, construction began at Mt. Locke.

One of the major astronomical research facilities in the world. 

 

 

 

107 inch Telescope

 

 Dome of the 9.2 m Hobby-Eberly Telescope. (HET)

It houses one of the largest optical telescopes in the world.  Dedicated in late 1997

We went to a "Star Party"