Presidio County Texas map
30.01° N · 104.26° W · County seat: Marfa · 3,856 sq mi
Presidio County is a triangle 3,856 square miles across, with 135 miles of the Rio Grande along its southern and western sides. It runs from Marfa, on a mile-high grassland plateau, down 60 miles of highway to Presidio on the river, which records the highest summer temperatures in Texas and is the lowest ground in the Trans-Pecos.
Marfa sits at the northeast corner on US-90. US-67 runs southwest from it through Shafter to Presidio and the international bridge at the bottom of the map.
Where Presidio County is
Presidio is the oldest county in the Trans-Pecos: the legislature created it in 1850 out of territory Texas claimed as Santa Fe County, and organized it in 1875. Brewster and Jeff Davis counties were both carved out of it in 1887. The name comes from Presidio del Norte, the eighteenth-century fort and settlement on the Mexican bank of the river, now the city of Ojinaga, Chihuahua.
Only three Texas counties touch it: Jeff Davis to the north, Brewster to the southeast and Hudspeth to the northwest. Everything else across the boundary is Mexico. Alpine is 26 miles east of Marfa on US-90; El Paso is 179 miles northwest, Odessa 170 miles northeast and Del Rio 207 miles southeast.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Presidio | City | 3,263 |
| Marfa (county seat) | City | 1,788 |
Presidio has nearly twice the population of the county seat. The rest of the county's 6,131 residents live at Redford, downriver from Presidio on FM-170; at Candelaria and Ruidosa, at the end of the river road upstream; and on ranches on the Marfa Plateau. Shafter, on US-67 halfway between the two towns, is a silver-mining town that produced through the 1930s and now has a few dozen residents and a well-kept cemetery.
Roads
- US-90 – the northern route through Marfa, east to Alpine and west to Valentine and Van Horn, following the Union Pacific line.
- US-67 – runs 60 miles southwest from Marfa through Shafter to Presidio, dropping about 2,000 feet on the way, and continues across the bridge as a Mexican federal highway to Chihuahua.
- SH-17 – north from Marfa to Fort Davis, Balmorhea and I-10.
- FM-170 – El Camino del Rio, the river road: east from Presidio 50 miles along the Rio Grande to Lajitas in Brewster County, with grades as steep as 15 percent at the Big Hill.
- Spur 203 – the short link to the international bridge on the south side of Presidio.
The border at Presidio and Ojinaga
The Presidio–Ojinaga International Bridge is the only vehicle crossing on the Rio Grande in the long gap between Fort Hancock, below El Paso, and Del Rio — roughly 500 river miles with one port of entry in the middle of it. It carries commercial traffic as well as local crossings, and Ojinaga, with a population several times Presidio's, is the market town for both sides.
The valley here is the oldest continuously farmed ground in Texas: the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos, which arrives from Mexico just upstream and roughly doubles the river's flow, supported irrigated farming villages long before Spanish expeditions reached them in the 1530s. Cantaloupes, onions and alfalfa still grow on the flats. Presidio sits at about 2,600 feet, low enough that the National Weather Service regularly reports it as the hottest place in Texas from May through August.
Marfa, the plateau and Big Bend Ranch
Marfa was laid out in the 1880s as a railroad water stop and became the county seat in 1885. It sits at about 4,690 feet on the grama grasslands of the Marfa Plateau, country that produced the Highland Hereford cattle that made the county's ranching reputation. Fort D. A. Russell, an army post on the south edge of town, closed after the Second World War and was bought in the 1970s by the artist Donald Judd, whose permanent installations there are now the Chinati Foundation. The Marfa lights viewing area sits on US-90 nine miles east of town.
The southern half of the county is desert mountain. Big Bend Ranch State Park, more than 300,000 acres between FM-170 and the Bofecillos highlands, is the largest state park in Texas; it is reached from the river road at Presidio or from Lajitas, and its interior roads require high clearance. Together with Big Bend National Park next door in Brewster County, it puts more than a million acres of protected Chihuahuan Desert along this stretch of river.