Reeves County-Pecos, Texas
Pecos, Reeves County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Flat, arid, grassy land with a moderate water supply from the Pecos River and springs in Toyah Valley. Yuma Indians are thought to have done irrigated framing her in 16th century. Mexicans later raised vegetables, grain. Cattlemen moved in during the 1870s. Texas & Pacific Railway opened route to El Paso in 1882. Farmers, merchants, mechanics settled in Pecos City and Toyah. County was irrigated agriculture began about 1900. Only dam on Pecos River in Texas was built in this county 1935. Privately owned deep wells are also used. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The flat, arid Toyah Valley around Pecos drew farmers to its river and springs long before the town existed—Native people are believed to have irrigated crops here in the 16th century, and Mexican farmers later raised grain and vegetables. Cattlemen arrived in the 1870s, and the Texas & Pacific Railway's 1882 line to El Paso brought merchants and mechanics to Pecos City and Toyah. Large-scale irrigated agriculture began around 1900, aided by deep wells and the 1935 dam, the only one on the Pecos River in Texas.
Why it matters
Reeves County's history captures how water, rail, and irrigation together turned a dry West Texas valley into productive farmland, a defining pattern of American settlement in the arid Southwest.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Vicinity of Significant Neighbors Ford Trail
Pecos, TX
In 1849 Texas Rangers and statesmen Robert S. Neighbors and John S. "Rip" Ford opened the first wagon road from Austin to El Paso, guided by the Delaware scout Jim Shaw and a Comanche named Guadalupe. Leaving the Pecos, they followed Toyah Creek to the Davis Mountains and pushed west to the Rio Grande, and on the return—their rations gone—they subsisted on roasted mescal, panther, and horse meat. The route they proved out, with its wood and water, became a major stage, military, and emigrant road.
Wild Rose Pass
Fort Davis, TX
Long before wagons rolled through, an Indian trail wound through these mountains along the floor of Limpia Canyon. To escape flash floods, travelers on the San Antonio–El Paso Road — emigrants, U.S. troops, and supply and mail trains — climbed instead to this higher gap, which they named for the wild roses that grew there. It became a landmark of the mid-19th-century overland route across far West Texas.
Site of Comanche Springs
St. Stockton, TX
Fed by water rising along geological faults, Comanche Springs gushed as one of the largest and most reliable oases in arid West Texas, drawing Native peoples since pre-Columbian times. Spanish wanderers — possibly Cabeza de Vaca around 1536 and the Mendoza expedition in 1684 — paused at its waters, as later did Comanche raiders on their war trail, gold seekers bound for California, and the Butterfield Overland Mail. Modern irrigation eventually drew down the aquifer until the springs ran dry.
Horse Head Crossing on the Pecos River
Girvin, TX
This ford on the Pecos was one of the great crossroads of the West, where the ancient Comanche Trail from the Llano Estacado to Mexico met the routes of American expansion. Surveyor John R. Bartlett found it in 1850 marked by horse skulls, giving it its name. The Butterfield Overland Mail, the road west from Fort Concho, and the Goodnight-Loving cattle trail all funneled through this single crossing.