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Wanderung 11

A Tantalizing Taste of the Texas Tropical Trail

January-February 2006

Wednesday, January 18th, 2006 - Big Bend National Park - Mariscal Mine.

Having seen some of the east and west sides of the park, I wanted to see a bit more of the interior. On a park map I found the site of Mariscal Mine marked on the East River Road that followed the bend of the Rio Grande to the south, and that seemed like a good target for a visit. The East River Road, however, was "unimproved", which seemed to mean that they took a road scraper over it once a year or so, but otherwise left it alone. The Black Gap Road was "unmaintained", which implied to me that they didn't even do that.

For the most part, the East River Road up to the Mariscal Mine site proved to be an ordinary dirt and gravel road, but when we crossed the dry washes the rocks and potholes became noticeably bigger and I had to slow the truck down to a crawl. The absolute worst places on the road, however, were two sand pits. One was on a straight, level stretch and had no potholes, and with 4-wheel drive and some extra speed I coped with that that one easily. The Big Daddy sand pit (my name for it) was truly something else. First it was on a relatively steep slope which made it easy going down--I had the assistance of gravity--but much harder coming back up. Second, it had a series of huge potholes about a foot deep and just the size of my truck tires. On the way out to the mine I slithered down Big Daddy with a lot of jerks and bumps and sand flying everywhere, but gravity helped us keep going in the tricky parts and we didn't get stuck.

As we approached Big Daddy on the way back, I stared up at the series of potholes and sand ridges looming above us and decided I needed lots of extra momentum to reach the top without getting stuck. So I gunned it and we went flying into the first set of potholes. Bouncing through them, we pitched up into the air a bit and then hit the second set of potholes with a huge "kerplop" and a shower of sand, but everything seemed to still be intact as we bounced back into the air. Then we came back down and hit the third set of potholes with a big "kabang" as the front suspension completely bottomed out. This time as the truck's suspension really rebounded and we flew into the air. As we approached the apogee of our arc, everything on the dashboard levitated into the cabin and I was surrounded by flying stuffed animals as I held onto the wheel for dear life waiting for our return to earth. The truck finally came back down with a resounding crash on the far edge of Big Daddy sandpit and so we did make it over the top without getting stuck, which was good, but I had to worry about whether I had damaged our front suspension. In retrospect I guess I gave it rather too much gas at the bottom and maybe should have tried a more gradual approach, but the thought of getting stuck in a sand pit in the middle of the desert was rather daunting.

In any case, we reached the Mariscal Mine site and spent an interesting hour or so walking among the ruins. We were careful not to touch anything, however, because this had been a mercury mine and everything in the area was described as being heavily contaminated. The guide we had obtained at Park Headquarters described the human cost to the miners quite graphically, and we both felt a lot of sympathy for folks faced with the choice of low paying agricultural jobs or a higher paying, but quite deadly, mining job in the Big Bend area.


 

The ore, called "cinnabar" was mined from shafts in the hillside. The old shaft entrances were all barred, but the bars had fairly large gaps to allow bats to enter and exit. Apparently the abandoned shafts had provided habitat for some of the local bat population, although I had my doubts how healthy it was to be roosting in a cave with mercury-laced ore in it.

The refining process was really quite simple. The ore was heated to over 300 degrees and the mercury evaporated from it. Then the mercury vapors were guided through several cooling towers so that the mercury would condense into liquid form. The drops of liquid mercury dripped down into collection troughs and were bottled in sealed flasks to be sent to market. Of course, both the exported mercury and everything that was brought in to be used in the mine had to be shipped by pack trains, which must have been an arduous process in the desert environment, especially in the summer when temperatures reportedly reach 180 degrees!


 

Retracing our steps from the Mariscal Mine, we returned to camp and spent the afternoon doing our laundry and taking a shower at the concessionaire's place in Rio Grande Village. That was all finished in time for us to walk the nature trail that started right in the campground just before sunset. Seeing the sun set across the Rio Grande and illuminate the Sierra del Carmen across the way in Mexico from our aerie was simply delightful. As we walked back to camp, we were both surprised by how quickly the air turned cold; after sunset it was just like someone had turned off the heat and turned on the air conditioning.

After dinner that evening we attended our final Ranger program at the campground. This one focused on the history of Big Bend National Park, and I was amused that politics back in the 1930s involved some of the same astonishingly stupid decisions that I observe in contemporary politics. After the idea of a National Park in Big Bend was floated in the early 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps set up a camp in the Chisos Mountains and from 1934-1936 began constructing roads, trails, and sites for park buildings. But the Texas governor vetoed a bill that would have appropriated $150,000 for acquiring the necessary land, whereupon the CCC stopped all work and withdrew the two corps that had been working on the park. Nothing happened until 1942 when the state had a new governor who finally committed the state to buying the land, whereupon the CCC came back to finish the basic work on the park. But by the time the state had purchased the land and presented all the deeds to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 for the formal creation of the park, the cost for buying the land had ballooned to $1,500,000, or about ten times as much as it would have cost in 1936! Talk about "penny wise and pound foolish". In any case, the Ranger program was a great way to end our stay in Big Bend Park. After the program ended we took one final look at the brilliant Milky Way in the clear, velvety black night sky, which was much prettier than we have ever seen in Virginia, and returned to our trailer to settle in for the night.

Copyright 2006 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

January 06
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February 2006
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