Travel Guide Terlingua

A lost ghost town near the Mexican border, Terlingua is the perfect place to spend a night on the edge of Big Bend National Park. Its restaurants and lodging facilities are as unusual as the town's appearance as the start or finish point of the delightful Highway 170 along the Rio Grande. If you're coming from the national park and want to continue west on Highway 170, it's easy to miss: look for the left turn from Study Butte-Terlingua to the ghost town of Terlingua. It's not obvious, but basically, if you see the Chili Pepper Café on your left, you've missed the turn and are heading down the long, dreary Highway 118 to Alpine. Once in Terlingua, enjoy a trip back in time to the Wild West, with remnants of old dry-stone buildings, sandy winds and cowboys. Visit the gift shop for a guided tour of the various local landmarks. We recommend a trip to the cemetery, where you'll find beautifully detailed, hand-carved Christian crosses and graves decorated with a variety of offerings. You will see, for example, nails, crucifixes, flowers, cans, unopened beer bottles, a trumpet, a snake skin, coins ... really unexpected things.