Why the West Texas Desert?

I’ve been working on the travel section of this site, and it struck me that I wrote a lot about my trip to Big Bend National Park and the West Texas desert.

There was something mystical about the desert, and you can see that page here. The wide-open spaces, the harsh environment, and the history of the area are intriguing. The legend of the American Cowboy is mostly legend, but it would have been hard to scratch out a living in that area. That made it easy to write about.

The area was not always desert, though, so it may not have been as hard to live there in the early 1800s as it looks now. The area used to have tall grass and lots of trees. In the early 1900s, there was a lot of mining for silver, mercury, and other precious metals. They cut down all the trees for fires to smelting the ore.

The trees were holding the grass in place, keeping the land stable. Once the trees were gone, the wind blew away the grass and the topsoil. The grass never came back, and it turned into the desert we see today.

Not many people live along the Rio Grande, which is the border between the U.S. and Mexico. It’s desert for hundreds of miles on both sides of the border. There are not many towns and not many roads. It is not an area where illegals are sneaking into the country. For many years no one paid a lot of attention to the border, and people came and went as they pleased. They still do, even if that isn’t the official line.

This is not an area where there needs to be much security. Hundreds of miles of desert is all the security that is needed. Any ideas to put up walls or anything else would only harm wildlife and cause problems for the environment.

I hope to get more travel-type stories posted soon and develop that part of the site.

I went to South America last spring and I have written some about that. I want to write more soon. Ill also be sharing some pictures.