On the last evening of my 2010 Big Bend trip I visited the “ghost town” of Terlingua. It was late, I didn’t have my full range of photographic gear, I couldn’t see much and could photograph even less. Thus, in 2011 it seemed only natural to pick-up where I left off in 2010.
And so, after setting-up camp in the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend, I drove west through the National Park and to Terlingua.
Picture above is the town (from atop a hill, looking the southeast and toward Big Bend). This is basically an all-encompassing view of Terlingua (or at least the lion’s share of its acreage).
In the immediate foreground are the rooftops of homes in this, “ghost town.” These are homes that are modernized for habitation. To keep the town’s reputation intact, there are restrictions on building and on making improvements to structures such as these. In other words, you nearly have to be standing in front of a house to see from the outside that it is a lived-in structure.
At about the center and to the right of the road is a vertical-running, “foothill,” (in the foreground). Some of the, “ghost,” buildings are situated in front of that, “foothill.”
Viewing downward from there you will see a ravine (that I almost walked into during a night of the year before). On the nearest side of that ravine (nearest to you, the viewer), are more “ghost” houses.
Looking back to the juncture of the road at the “foothill,” and further up, is the, “ghost town,” grave yard (referenced at photograph 09 in this gallery).
Visible to the left of the road are more resident dwellings.
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 35.1 megabytes (MB).
For display on this web site the TIFF was duplicated and the duplicate re-formatted as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG/JPEG) image with a file data size of 3.95 MB. To approximate detail visible at the time of capture the image was sharpened as necessary and resampled via the Photoshop Bicubic Sharpen algorithm. The re-sampling increases the image resolution from 300 Dots Per Square Inch (DPI) to 360 DPI.
Unless otherwise noted the image was corrected to offset color shift and balance. This restores black (shadows), white (highlights) and neutral gray (neutral mid-tones).
• An unnumbered image is the only one of the subject matter.
• A number corresponds to the sequential order in a subject-matter-related sequence.
• The letter “B” indicates color correction to approximate what was visible when the image was captured.
• The letter “C” indicates enhancement beyond an approximation of what was visible at the time of capture.