Driving Highway 90 between Alpine and Del Rio (or reverse) calls for a stop at the almost Ghost Town of Langtry, Texas. There are two places open besides the Texas Department of Highways Museum; a little curio shop with some food and drinks, and the Post Office. One of those will be gone in a few weeks. The Post Office is on the "hit list" for closure.
This place only exists because of one of Texas' most colorful characters of a hundred plus years ago. His name was Roy Bean. In the 1880's Southern Pacific Railroad established a grading camp near there. It was first called Eagle Nest and then Langtry, after the engineer and foreman who supervised the Chinese work crew building the tracks.
A tent-saloon operator named Roy Bean moved his operation there. He squatted on railroad property and finally had it for his own. He built a permanent saloon and appointed himself Justice of The Peace. He held court on the front porch of his saloon and dished out colorful justice for some twenty years. Rumors were that several were sentenced to hang, but there is no evidence of that. There are many stories about Bean and Langtry. Hollywood picked up on it and produced a film in 1940 called "The Westerner". It had Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan in it. Brennan stole the show as the Judge and won an Oscar for it.
One of the stories is that Bean named the town after a beautiful English singer, Lillie Langtry, who he had never met. He built a little opera house there for her. She finally came, but it was 1904 and the Judge had died in 1903.
A true story is that a championship boxing match was held there. Matches were against the law in Texas. That didn't stop the Judge. He had it across the Rio Grande, along the river bank, in Mexico. People came by train to Langtry to see Bob Fitzsimmons of Australia defeat Peter Mahar of Ireland! They all had to stop in the judge's place for refreshments!
To see the places today, all this has to be imagined. There are wind and sun baked buildings collapsing all around. The old saloon is still there, almost untouched from the days of the Judge. It is small. I went inside and put my foot on the old iron rail at the bar and ordered a coke. Since I was the only one present the order went unfulfilled. I have no doubt but what this place WAS the only law west of the Pecos, except the law of the six-gun. There were some holes in the saloon that appeared the size of a 44. The law dished out was mostly of Judge Roy Bean's invention.
Western Texas along the Rio Grande will allow one's imagination to run wild. Mine did.
