No one knows how much water sits beneath the desert of Terlingua. Residents worry their wells will run dry, as developers and local officials cheer the tourism boom.
Georganne Bradbury, left, and Rick Bradbury inspect their water well as they give a tour of their water system at their home on Terlingua Ranch in South Brewster County . The couple has garnered a reputation among locals for their services as the areas trusted water haulers, often delivering between three and four 500-gallon truckloads of water a day during peak tourism season.
For decades, the Terlingua community has survived by obeying the arid ways of the desert, conserving every trickle of water, and knowing its reserves won’t always be full. And it offers a prelude to the rest of the state. As Texas’ population booms, the need for clean and reliable water is outpacing the supply. And the finite resource faces additional duress from an increase of hotter days and aging infrastructure. By 2070,Between the 1880s and the 1940s, Terlingua was a mining town rich with cinnabar deposits, a source of mercury. The population boomed to more than 1,000 people and production peaked in the 1920s.
Only one of the five ranch wells supplies drinking water and supports ranch operations. It was purchased from a property owner after another went dry in 2011. A second keeps the community pool filled. The third well provides nonpotable water the association sells. A fourth well feeds nondrinking water into the tourists’ cabins. A fifth well is completely dry.
Terlingua Ranch, an association of more than 5,000 privately-owned tracts of land that form one of the area’s largest neighborhoods, sits 20 minutes north of Study Butte. The 200,000-acre ranch offers water for its approximately 1,500 full-time residents to purchase, but the service does come with restrictions.In addition to restricting the ranch’s water service, the association’s board members are encouraging property owners to develop their own independent water supply.
Booking prices have almost doubled since 2018. The average cost per night for a short-term rental was $130 in 2018. It is $250 today. “We loved Big Bend National Park and knew that it was getting discovered in a new way,” Emily, 28, said. Emily and Ziad do not have strict limits on how much water their guests may consume. Rather, they educate their visitors on water usage. They also installed components that control the water flow and lessen the output. They’ve reduced water consumption by roughly 20% since the start of 2024, they said.Slava Chupryna owns Space Cowboys. His rentals — geodesic domes and safari tents — sit on a hill made of volcanic rock.
Leach has earned a reputation in Terlingua as one of the area’s ambitious entrepreneurs, overseeing the businesses he has accumulated over the years, which many locals frequent. “There’s no way we can say, ‘There’s unlimited water supply, everyone come and take whatever you want,’” he said. Still, he said the county should start to consider how much water the area can continue to supply should growth — and the accompanying tourism — continue at the pace it has.
It has doubled the amount of water it supplies in the last decade, according to records provided to The Texas Tribune. In 2014, water managers piped water into 227 taps hooked up to its tanks, selling 8.4 million gallons of water. In 2023, the number of taps did not significantly increase, but the amount of water did, with 18 million gallons sold.
Robert Mace, executive director at The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, said aquifers help scientists and legislators locate usable water. At the time, researchers described the rock making up the Santa Elena Limestone as “massive and hard,” estimating the layer of rock to be 1,000 feet thick. The water was salty, dense and laden with chemicals including chloride and fluoride, at the time exceeding safe drinking standards, researchers wrote. They also detected significant radioactivity. The report did not provide conclusions about the amount of water available to the area.
Bjornson said the area’s population plays a key role. The more wells there are, the more data they can collect. Shannon Montague and her husband, Waylon Montague, uprooted their life in New Braunfels for Terlingua nine years ago to be closer to Waylon’s family.
Drought Environment Groundwater Water Supply Texas Water Development Board Marfa Brewster County West Texas Texas Legislature
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