The "law west of the Pecos"

Just west of Seminole Canyon State Park we crossed the Pecos River. Unlike many rivers that we have crossed in south and west Texas, this is a real river with water flowing through a pretty deep canyon that the bridge traversed. Now that we were west of the Pecos, we were in Judge Roy Bean territory. Judge Roy Bean - the "law west of the Pecos." 

Sure enough, about five miles down the road was Langtry, Texas, where the Judge established a colorful brand of justice in the last decades of the 1800s, and where there is a Visitor Center named in his honor. Not only dispensing travel information, the Visitor Center also supplies a healthy interpretation of the career of the legendary Judge Roy Bean. He lived a life in which fiction became so intermingled with fact that he became a legend within his lifetime. 

Texas west of the Pecos in the 1880s was a place where the railroad was being built and new towns and tent camps of construction gangs sprang up. They were wild, lawless places, crowded with railroad workers and those who preyed upon them -- thieves, card sharks and painted women. By 1882, the situation was so bad that the railroad asked for help from the Texas Rangers. The railroad and the Texas Rangers urged the appointment of a Justice of the Peace. Roy Bean became the first Justice of the Peace for Pecos County and in his court, which was held in his saloon, justice was swift. 

When an accused was brought in, Judge Bean removed his toweling apron, hauled out his law book and called a jury from among his customers. Occasionally, he based a ruling on his single law book, the 1879 Revised Statutes of Texas. More often, he applied his own sense of frontier justice, backed up by the six-shooter on the table beside him. 

This building was named the "Jersey Lilly" for the famous English actress Lillie Langtry whom Bean admired and for whom he claimed to have named the town. He wrote frequent letters to her, but he never saw her since her only visit to Langtry occurred in 1904, less than a year after Bean died.

The Judge Roy Bean Visitor Center also has a Cactus Garden Interpretive Trail. This guy not only has an intriguing shape, but is also starting to show yellow flowers on his top-knot.

This is one of the largest agaves we have seen. Frederick is there for scale.

As we continued driving west the scenery changed from flat with canyons to rolling hills and eventually mountains. 

We stopped for lunch at a roadside picnic shelter.

As we neared Marathon, the scenery definitely got interesting.

Marathon is an intriguing place with a population of 430. We are staying at the Marathon Motel and RV Park. This blooming prickly pear is at the front of the motel.

We went for a walk in town and came upon Eves Garden Organic Bed & Breakfast. It certainly has eye-catching architecture. 

And brilliant colors.

The sign is almost as big as the library building.

 This is the Albion Shepard House in Marathon. He was a retired sea captain who arrived here in 1883 as a railroad surveyor and acquired much land which was stocked with as many as 25,000 sheep managed by herders with no fences. Capt. Shepard is credited with the naming of Marathon. He observed the similarity of the valley and its encircling hills to Marathon, Greece, where the mountains meet the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.