Terlingua Ghost Town

Terlingua Ghost Town
Terlingua, Texas (Brewster County)
Photo Credit: TEXScout / Texas Film Commission

Perhaps the best-kept secret about the Big Bend is the view from the porch in Terlingua Ghost Town. Most afternoons you can see the Santa Fe de Los Pinos mountain range over 80 miles south in Mexico, and of course such local landmarks as the Chisos Mountains and Mule Ears peaks. Visitors will also find a trading company/gift shop, art galleries, unique lodging options, restaurants, and bars. Terlingua was a mining town around the turn of the century and was the site of the first famous championship chili cook off in 1967, that today draws over 10,000 “chili heads” from all over the world on the first Saturday every November.

Visit Big Bend

Films Featured

Gambler V: Playing for Keeps (TV Movie, 1994)
- At the end of Gambler V: Playing for Keeps, the Terlingua Ghost Town was used to represent the Mexican outpost to where the Wild Bunch escaped. Fearing for their lives with an army encroaching upon them, Etta Place (Mariska Hargitay), Brady Hawkes (Kenny Rogers), and his son leave the ruins and head to safety in the United States, while Butch Cassidy (Scott Paulin) and the Sundance Kid (Brett Cullen) stay behind to make one last stand as outlaws.
Streets of Laredo (TV Mini-Series, 1995)
- Captain Woodrow Call, now retired from the Rangers, is a bounty hunter. He is hired by an eastern rail baron to track down Joey Garza, a new kind of killer, only a boy, who kills from a distance with a rifle. Joined by his old compadre Pea Eye, it is a long ride to south Texas and the Mexican side of the border, where the past, in the form of Maria Garza, Joey's mother, haunts Call.