Essays

Moseying: Locations of Interest

Santa Rosa Spring
October 22, 2003

“Sometimes it seems that most of this country is drying up and blowing away. Every town in west Texas is losing population – even Midland and Odessa. We need reasons to keep people in west Texas.” I was chatting with rancher Schuyler Wight and we had gotten sidetracked a bit. I was feeling a bit glum that morning – Marathon Oil had recently announced a major cutback in the local workforce, and I had just learned an old friend was moving on.

“About the only proven new industry in the region is that of the wind turbines on every mesa in sight,” he commented. I answered with a statement of doubt that Ft. Stockton’s “spaceport” would ever really get going, then spoke of the idea that “La Entrada al Pacifico” might help out west Texas.

Mr. Schuyler answered, “We have long passed the peak of regional oil production – the next twenty years will be mighty interesting, because it will determine our regional future. We long-time ranching families have not been listened to or paid attention to for two generations – and we have always said the region has to define itself as more than an oil producing region. Billions of dollars have been made from oil, and we don’t have much to show for it but memories.”

I switched subjects on him, just a little. “You know, I have been gathering up lots of regional historical information. I really like to read about the time period from 1890 until 1920. This area was full of folks with the most positive and proud attitude. The early settlers had an incredible self-confidence that they could “civilize” this region. This area was the last in the continental United States to be settled, because it is a tough hard country – what with our long droughts every other decade.” I then returned to his last comment, “Long time ranching families are the only ones, just about, with a detached or long-term perspective about our future. You folks have seen booms come and go – like irrigated farming, like what has caused you so many problems. It lasted forty years before the Oglalla Aquifer dropped, and before the Pecos river valley turned salty. Ranching families have seen the complete history of the regional oil industry, both the booms and the busts. You folks know the land always remains, no matter what dreams mortal man might have.”

Not too long ago I visited Mr. Wight’s ranch at Santa Rosa Spring, a ways southwest of Grandfalls, which is south of Monahans. Grandfalls was once a booming farming town, back before the salty Rio Pecos ruined the farms, and back when there was more water in the Pecos. Deborah and I drove around in Grandfalls for a while, the same day we visited Mr. Wight’s ranch. Just about everybody in Grandfalls has a collection of “stuff” they deemed valuable, either piled up near their house, or in a shed or barn. This “stuff” that came from a neighbor’s property, after it became obvious nobody would ever buy the place the neighbor abandoned to go look for better economic conditions, someplace else. We loved the old Masonic Lodge in town, and we wished we knew its history, and the story of its builder.

We visited Santa Rosa Spring on a day that huge thunderheads loomed overhead. At first, I refused to go hiking – we had the 5 year-old grandson, the Boopster-man, with us. I get a bit ringy when thunder is booming – lightning scares the “pee-wa” out of me. After hanging around for awhile, the clouds seemed to move off, and I let her talk me into hiking down to the spring area. We mushed through the cienaga above the spring, squishing the gyppy mud as we stepped from alkali sacaton tussock to tussock. We pushed through the creosote bush – catclaw gravelly hillsides, each of us collecting at least one 6-inch stripe of blood for our efforts. The Boopster has learned not to cry just because he can see his own blood – pretty good for one of them city California kids, wouldn’t you say?

Mr. Wight had been chatting with me about the spring. “I never thought I would hear myself saying some of the things that I do, nowadays. I want to save this spring – it is one of only two of the 41 springs once found in Pecos County that still run. I am of the anti-environmentalist, private property rights ilk – I do not like the Endangered Species Act, for example. But, I find that to preserve this spring, I can get friendly advice from folks like the Nature Conservancy, and nothing but grief from the state. The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission and the Texas Department of Licensing Regulation consider the old water irrigation district well whose plug failed in 200l my responsibility, although I did not drill the well. The leaking well ran 7000 barrels a day. I have a cap “jury-rigged” right now, but it won’t last. Uncapped, the well can flow a hundred thousand barrels of water a day, and all of it a lot saltier than the ocean – 175,000 ppm of salt. The dead bare ground around the well is from when water came out of the well. If it runs unchecked it will kill every bit of vegetation in the bottomlands of the ranch. I cannot afford to cap the well – estimates come in at 50 grand to 125 grand – and that is way too much for me to handle. I do have hopes of getting a grant from the Texas Soil and Water Conservation Board in Temple to cap the well.”

In 1955 the Pecos County Water Control and Improvement District #2 was created by an act of the Texas State Legislature. 800 grand in bonds were authorized, and 180 grand of that was spent on drilling a water well 3500 feet deep. Instead of making water flow, it drained the spring. The district plugged the well, and walked off and left it. When it came time to make payment on the bonds, they defaulted. Lawsuits were filed and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the water district was valid, and a deal was worked out with the oil companies that owned the minerals under the lad to pay off the bonds. The county never went though a formal process to dissolve the district – they just quit levying the taxes. A group out of Albuquerque, New Mexico owned the surface rights in the ‘50’s, which took bankruptcy. The spring started running again in the 1970’s, with good quality water, and Mr. Wight acquired the ranch in 1993.

The spring has a large pool of water, and then it runs for a mile and a half down the draw. Mr. Wight has been killing salt cedar near the spring, which made it run stronger. In September 2003 he arranged a deal with the Natural Resource Conservation District and the Texas Cooperative Extension Service to kill even more. The water sub-irrigates grass that he utilizes for grazing – and the bottomlands is about the only place that he can put more than one cow per square mile on the ranch. If the old well pops again, and is not capped again, he will lose every bit of that grass – and a rancher needs grass.

Mr. Wight wants public support. He wants the public to be aware of his troubles. He needs help to cap that water well that could ruin his ranch. Unlike many ranchers who limit public access (because of suffering too many years of trespassers that trash out the place, and shoot cows and windmills, and leave gates open) he is willing to let folks visit. Call him at 432–638-8706 to arrange a tour. Go to his website – www.santarosaspring.com. Ask him about the old town of Santa Lucia near the spring, and the miles of acequias (irrigation ditches) all lined with cottonwoods that could be seen from 20 miles away on the other side of the Pecos River to the north. In 1900, folks looked for a bright tomorrow, but in 2003 Mr. Wight faces a grim future.