Texas · Ghost town
Terlingua
A mercury mining district near the Rio Grande, with a cemetery that is the most photographed thing in the Big Bend country.
Position Brewster County, Texas · 29.2992, -103.5794
Cinnabar, the ore from which mercury is extracted, was found here in the mid-1880s and brought a city of two thousand people to a stretch of desert near the Rio Grande. What survives is the ghost town of the Howard Perry-owned Chisos Mining Company, plus a number of capped and abandoned mine shafts scattered through the district.
Terlingua sits in southwestern Brewster County, close to Lajitas and Study Butte and to the Mexican state of Chihuahua across the river. Big Bend National Park is the reason most people are in the area at all.
The cemetery is the site people come for: rough stone graves, wooden crosses, offerings left on them, all of it exposed on open ground. It is still in use, and the Day of the Dead observance here is a community event rather than a spectacle.
Mercury mining leaves a legacy in the soil. Stay out of the workings and off the tailings.
Facts checked against the Wikipedia article Terlingua, Texas. The words above are ours.