Marfa Lights Viewing Area

East of Marfa, there's a viewing platform where people gather after dark to watch orbs of light flicker over the Chisos Mountains. The Marfa Lights have been doing this since the 1880s, and nobody has explained them.

On a wide shoulder of Highway 90 just east of Marfa in Presidio County, curious visitors gather on clear nights to witness one of America's most enduring mysteries: the Marfa Lights.

The first historical record dates to 1883, when young cowhand Robert Reed Ellison spotted a flickering light while driving cattle through Paisano Pass. Thinking it was an Apache campfire, he investigated but found no ashes or evidence. Other settlers told him they often saw the lights and had never found their source. Joe and Anne Humphreys reported sightings in 1885. Indians told Mexican settlers about the phenomenon, calling it "Alsate's Ghost" after an Apache chief killed by Mexicans.

The first published account appeared in Coronet magazine in July 1957. Actor James Dean became obsessed with the lights while filming "Giant," spending hours watching the desert through a telescope set up at his hotel window.

Witnesses describe orbs of light that change in intensity and color—usually yellow-orange but occasionally green, blue, or red. They appear to hover, merge, split, and move erratically above desert vegetation but below the mesa line in the background.

Scientists from the University of Texas at Dallas observed the lights from 2000 to 2008, concluding they were likely automobile headlights distorted by temperature gradients in the desert air. Marfa sits at 4,688 feet elevation, where temperature differences of 40-50°F between daily highs and lows are common, creating mirage-like effects.

Others theorize the lights come from the same gases that create "swamp gas"—phosphine and methane that can ignite on contact with oxygen. Though Marfa is nowhere near a marsh, significant petroleum reserves exist in the area. Some invoke the piezoelectric effect—expansion and contraction of quartz rocks creating static electricity.

Yet the car headlight explanation cannot account for the 1883 sighting—16 years before automobiles arrived in Texas and four decades before Highway 67 was built. Despite over a century of investigation, no theory fully explains the phenomenon. Today, visitors travel across the country for a chance to observe the lights and join the annual Marfa Lights Festival.