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The Marfa Lights Viewing Center is a fairly unassuming, desert minimalist structure – an orange stucco cylinder dotted with a row of square windows and a concrete deck facing south towards the Chinati Mountains. The center blends into the adjacent stretch of the Chihuahuan Desert called Mitchell Flat – an expanse of brushy grasses and spiky plants that look like they don’t want to be touched.
The Marfa Lights, the reason for the Viewing Center’s existence, have many names: mystery lights, strange lights, weird lights, ghost lights, or just car lights (if you’re not a believer). According to those who’ve seen them, they’re roughly the size of basketballs, colored white, blue, yellow, or even red, and move in myriad ways: hovering, merging, glowing, flickering, or skittering across Mitchell Flat in the dark. Some think the lights are an atmospheric occurrence: low-floating orbs of gas and light. Others think they’re supernatural: UFO communications, the results of nuclear testing, or ghosts. Ultimately, though many have come to test their theories, no one can say conclusively what they are, just that they are.
When I arrived in Marfa the first time, I, like many, drove the ten minutes outside of town to the Marfa Lights Viewing Center hoping to see the lights (I was unlucky, and did not). Nevertheless, I was struck by the simplicity of the structure. The center is mainly just a deck, an empty picture frame, a stage upon which a show might be performed, or might not be, depending on the night. It’s a waiting room for those hoping for an appointment with the supernatural.
The lights are an eternal mystery that I’m not aiming to solve (at least not today), but I’ve always been curious how the Viewing Center came to be. It is a significant architectural object of the region, and turns out it has an equally intriguing story – the center was entirely conceived of by a group of Marfa ISD 8th graders.
“ There was nothing out there when I was growing up,” said longtime Marfa resident Martha Stafford. We were standing together in the back room of the Marfa and Presidio County Museum, where Stafford works as the museum’s administrator. She said back then, to see the lights, folks would drive down Nopal Road, and park off to the side. “Of course,” Stafford said, “going to view the Marfa lights was really code for there's a party, or you're going out there with your boyfriend.”
Stafford had very kindly taken out a large blue bin of Marfa Lights Viewing Center memorabilia from the class’s project, which began in 1997: binders of newspaper clippings, letters, big pages of laminated blueprints, novelty tee shirts and even a ribbon from the official unveiling of the center.
Looking through the materials, kid whimsy mingled with governmental bureaucracy. There was a binder labeled with metallic marker, speeches given to state officials printed in big font, pencil drawings of potential center designs, a strong advocation for bathrooms at the site, and myriad letters exchanged between the class and the Texas Department of Transportation. Stafford showed me a giant laminated arts-and-crafts style poster with colorful construction paper letters spelling out the official name of the project: The M in Marfa Stands For Mystery.
Stafford told me all of the materials had been donated by the former gifted and talented teacher Felicia Locke, who spearheaded the class project alongside teacher Nancy Polson. Locke still lives in the area, so later that week, I went over to her house to chat about exactly how the center came to be.
Locke told me the Viewing Center project began as a persuasive letter writing assignment. Each student had to propose a project that they would then try to persuade an entity to build in Marfa. The ideas ranged in scope. One student had proposed the class focus on getting a Walmart, another suggested a skating mall (I had to look this up. It’s a mall with an ice skating rink in it). The Marfa Lights Viewing Center project won by a class vote.
Locke has her own history with the Marfa Lights. She lived on the Dipper Ranch up in the Chinati Mountains south of Marfa, a prime location for light-spotting. “They came through my windows at night,” Locke said. She told me that for years, scientists would come to the ranch to study them. Locke’s favorite theory explains the lights as a fata morgana illusion: “It's gotta be something in the atmosphere that reacts with the desert floor, where the warm air from the desert floor comes up to meet the cool air and produces a mirroring effect.”
Before getting to work, the students studied all the theories, scientific and otherwise, and tried to come up with a design for the center that would take into account the mystery of the lights and the largesse of the land.
“ We didn't want it to stick out like a sore thumb, so we wanted something that would blend in with the environment,” said Locke. “I mean, these are 13 year olds in eighth grade, and they would make little models out of popsicle sticks. Then another student wanted rock structures so they'd go out on the playground and get little pebbles and hot glue them together. And then we had some that did clay for more of a stucco look. These kids were so intent on getting it right.”
The proposal traveled up the chain from the Marfa Chamber of Commerce to Presidio County Commissioner's Court, where each student from the class spoke on the project. The speeches are captured in a binder at the Marfa and Presidio County Museum and they are indeed persuasive, and very polite: a lot of “good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time ladies and gentlemen.” Finally the plan went to then-state representative Pete Gallego, who presented it to the Texas State Senate. They loved the idea and asked the class to fax the state their blueprints.
While this seems like a fairly lofty ask for an 8th grade class, Locke had some connections. Her father, Alexander Brailas, was an architect in Houston for decades, and agreed to design the center based on all of the ideas from the students.
The senate loved the plan and allocated a million dollars to the project. “It was surreal,” said Locke. “The kids couldn't believe it and neither could I.” The center officially opened in 2002.
The project was so successful that Locke, Polson and a couple of students traveled around the state to talk to other schools in Odessa, Midland, and even as far as Houston. One of those students was Stacey Harris (née Hibbits).
Harris gave me a call one evening last week, after wrapping up her day as a teacher in Del Rio. While Harris doesn't come back to Marfa too often, she still tells the story of how the Viewing Center came to be. She has a student that often travels to El Paso, through Marfa.
“I was like, ‘Hey, you've gotta stop at the Marfa Lights Viewing Center and look for the plaque with my name on it,’” she told me. “It was neat to be able to tell the next generation that I'm teaching about the project.”
I, somewhat shamefully, told Locke that while I’d visited the center many times, I’d never seen the lights. “Well you have to know where to look,” she said. Locke told me that while a lot of people look to the right of the center, that’s a bit of a red herring – you’ll likely catch the Presidio highway lights. You have to look southwesterly and left, low on the horizon.
On a recent night I stopped by the center, just to do my due diligence. I walked up the steps to the deck, and followed Locke’s directions. Maybe I’m too much of a skeptic, but I didn’t see the lights on this visit either. I enjoyed the calm of the center regardless. Ironically, a tourist destination feels like one of the most private spots in town. I sat on the ledge and watched people watch the horizon, cycling through delight, disappointment, impatience, hope, and wonder.
I recalled a tee shirt buried in the blue bin at the museum that read, I've seen the Marfa Lights and they've seen me. I love this idea of reciprocity, that the lights are not passive. Maybe they’re staring right back. If that’s true, the Marfa Lights Viewing Center is just as much for us as it is for the lights – it shows them where to look.
All photos by Zoe Kurland.
