Marfa

Marfa was founded in the early 1880s as a water stop on the railway across far West Texas. It was named, at the suggestion of a railway executive's wife, after a character in a Jules Verne novel, although a story that the name came from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov has long circulated. The town grew as a ranching centre and became the seat of Presidio County, and the Marfa lights were first recorded in 1883.

In 1911 the army set up a post outside town, later named Fort D. A. Russell, for cavalry and air reconnaissance units sent to guard the border after Pancho Villa's raid. During the Second World War the fort grew into a large base, with an airfield for training pilots and a camp for German prisoners of war; Marfa's population had peaked in the 1930s. The fort closed in 1946, and drought and the end of the war left the town struggling. The 1956 film Giant was shot in and around Marfa, and its cast, among them James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor, stayed in the town during filming.

The minimalist artist Donald Judd arrived from New York in the early 1970s, bought ranches and buildings, and with help from the Dia Art Foundation acquired the old fort, where in 1979 he began turning the buildings into spaces for permanent installations. The Chinati Foundation opened in 1986. After Judd's death in 1994 the Chinati Foundation and the Judd Foundation continued his work, and the art drew visitors, film crews and new residents. In July 2024 the Blackwell School, where Hispanic children were taught separately until 1965, became a national historic site.

Marfa's fame rests on minimalist art. Judd wanted large bodies of an artist's work installed permanently, as a kind of anti-museum, rather than shown in temporary exhibitions, and Chinati still presents work by Judd, Dan Flavin, John Chamberlain and others in that spirit. Since 2003 Ballroom Marfa has shown art films and installations and hosted concerts, and the Crowley Theater and a local theatre group stage public events. Prada Marfa, a permanent installation by the artists Elmgreen & Dragset in the form of a Prada shop out on US 90, was vandalised on the night it was finished in 2005 and has been repaired rather than left to decay as first planned.

The town also has a long screen history: Giant was filmed here in the 1950s, and parts of There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men were shot in and around Marfa in 2006. The Marfa lights are a local institution, celebrated each year with the Marfa Lights Festival.

Beneath the art scene is an older town: about two-thirds of residents are Hispanic, ranching families have deep roots, and the Blackwell School recalls decades of segregated schooling, when, after 1954, pupils were not allowed to speak Spanish.

About 1,800 people lived in Marfa at the 2020 census. It is the seat of Presidio County, and life still revolves partly around the courthouse, the schools and the ranches of the surrounding grassland.

The art economy has changed the town. Galleries, shops and restaurants serve visitors who come for Chinati and the lights, and many open only from Wednesday to Saturday. Of about 1,100 houses counted in 2020, more than a fifth stood vacant. The former army post on the south side has become a cultural district of its own, with Chinati and the Building 98 artist residency, run since 2002 by the International Woman's Foundation.

Marfa Public Radio, a National Public Radio affiliate, is based in the town, and local news comes from a weekly paper, the Big Bend Sentinel. Life moves at a slow pace, the street lights go off late at night, and the nearest airports with commercial flights are more than 180 miles away.

For a town of its size Marfa has a varied, if small, set of places to eat, shaped by the visitors drawn by the art. Mexican cooking reflects the town's Hispanic majority and the ranching country around it.

Pizza Foundation sells big thin-crust slices, and the cafés along Highland Avenue and San Antonio Street serve coffee, breakfast and light meals. Many of the town's galleries and restaurants are within walking distance of one another on the main street, between the courthouse and the post office. Many kitchens keep limited days and hours, so planning meals around the Wednesday to Saturday rhythm matters. Beyond town, Marathon, to the east on US 90, has small cafés of its own.