Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Place of Dreams or Overgrazed Pasture filled with Cactus?
March 27, 2002

Let's take a little Sunday drive. We'll head west out of Midland on Highway 191 and turn south on FM 1788. Right past the junction with Andrews Highway the road climbs uphill. On the south side of the freeway, an open shortgrass prairie beckons, with Midland International Airport just beyond. I have heard old-timers refer to the area as "the dry ridge," claiming it receives less rainfall than other parts of the county. The area is a good representation of how this country used to look, before the advent of the mesquite brushland. Most people have heard that mesquite came in with cattle, but that is a folktale. Mesquite charcoal dating from the 1100's was found on Wadley Street at the site that is now home to Trinity School.

Local birders like to check out the little pond to the west of the CEED building to see what birds are currently visiting and also to look at the little playa just south of the parking lot. Overflow water from the pond makes the playa damp most of the time, so grassland birds often stop to drink there. In the winter, Longspurs all the way from the Arctic Circle spend the winter in the shortgrass, coming to get a drink in the puddles. Birdwatchers are rewarded by seeing such a rare bird. Rare for here, that is.

Not too far south of the junction, a clay-bottomed playa can be found on the west side of the road. After a good spring thunderstorm has filled the playa with water, the pond sparkles with white arrowroot flowers. Comanche women waded in such playas every year, digging in the soil with their feet for the tubers. Arrowroot tubers can be fried or added to soups. Nowadays at the grocery store, a person can buy arrowroot powder as a thickening agent for sauces.

The holding pond for Lake Ivie is another mile further to the south. After being pumped 170 miles to this location, water then travels to the city water plant, and finally to our faucets. The Lake Ivie holding pond serves both Midland and Odessa, so 40 million gallons of water come through it on a typical summer day. Let's hope this drought breaks, and the pipeline doesn’t -- otherwise we might be in for some tough times.

Now, let’s zip over Highway 80 and Interstate 20 at Warfield. We will keep moving south to Monahans draw. For years before the city started recycling it to use in parks, Odessa sewage water ran down the draw. It remains filled with Salt Cedar shrubs and dying or dead cattails. The soil at the draw is what ranchers call “gyppy” soil. It is whitish-gray in color, with a pH of 9. A special group of plants (some of the rarest of the county) are able to survive in the harsh soil and can be found along the draw. The Faudree Ranch has given local naturalists permission to survey the plants and birds of the draw. In the Salt Cedar thickets, Long-Billed Thrashers colonized the habitat for a number of years. The closest place the species are normally found way down in Laredo. Such strange and wonderful occurrences are amazing!

Another few miles south is yet another playa, bisected by 1788. Selenia blooms in most Februarys. This flat little yellow mustard makes perfect circles of flowers. On the east side of the playa a bunch of prairie dogs can be found running around, and if folks sit awhile, sometimes one of their predators will show up. Golden Eagles, coyotes, and badgers have all been seen there.

Moseying a little further still, the road slowly climbs past a junction with a road that leads to Odessa. But we will keep on moving south on the divide between Monahans Draw and the headwaters of Johnson Draw. A couple more playas are visible, especially to the east. Often a small herd of Pronghorn can be seen grazing among the prairie dog burrows.

A little further south, Large-Pad Prickly Pear creates a cactus forest. Back in the 1930's, drought cattle were driven up from ranches to the south, and trucks carried the burned pads to feed the cattle each night. Pieces left behind rooted, and over the last 70 years the cactus has spread to cover several square miles of ranch land. Along this stretch, a person will start seeing creosote bush, tarbrush, javelina brush and allthorn -- all common in the Chihuahuan Desert. North of Johnson Draw the soil is usually sandy, but south of it the soil becomes shallow and rocky. Johnson Draw divides the Llano Estacado from the Chihuahuan Desert, if you go by plant associations.

When you reach the cactus forests, you are in the heart of the empty lands. In the buffalo prairie days, no surface water could be found for the next 60 miles, except in playas in rainy times. Every fall, the Comanche Indians rode across the area to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River as they headed to Mexico to raid for horses, cattle, material goods, and captives. They also considered the area "holy lands" for vision quests, where young teenagers would fast for four days in order to experience vivid dreams and hallucinations from the lack of food.

The area is harsh by modern standards, an unforgiving desert, barely able to support a cow or sheep per square mile. We consider it a wasteland, but the Comanche considered it a holy place. We will end our Sunday drive here to park near the cactus forest, get out of the car, feel the wind and sun, and let our minds travel, imagining how it must of been for inexperienced youth to be left here all alone in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of "the place of dreams."