It’s a wondrous desert oasis, that beckons West Texans on summer days. The pool at Balmorhea State Park is fed by the cool waters of San Solomon Springs. Those same waters are also vital for local farmers and endangered desert fish.
But their future isn’t guaranteed: Flows from the springs have declined by a third since the 1950s.
The San Solomon Springs Collaborative aims to address that. Dr. Jesse Kelsch, a Sul Ross State University geologist, is bringing her expertise to the effort, as part of her broader project to understand the underground water that sustains our region.
“The San Solomon Springs is clearly a real prize,” Kelsch said, “a real value to so many people in West Texas. And the San Solomon Springs Collaborative organized in order to understand it better and to understand why flow has decreased over some period of time.”
Launched in 2026, the collaborative is itself housed at another new organization, the Meadows Research Institute for West Texas Water at Sul Ross. The collaborative’s goal is to connect landowners, groundwater managers and scientists on behalf of the springs.
Kelsch is pursuing fundamental questions: How old is the groundwater that flows out here? Where does it come from? Is it recharged by rainfall, and if so, where does that recharge occur?
Those questions are complicated – because the geology is. At Balmorhea, the volcanic rocks of the Davis Mountains intersect with limestones and other carbonate rocks laid down 250 million years earlier, in a Permian-age sea. All those rocks, in turn, have been bent and broken by powerful tectonic forces. It’s created a subterranean labyrinth of “pipes” and “walls,” Kelsch said, which carry or block water.
It’s possible Balmorhea’s waters are “ancient” and aren’t being replenished – in which case the springs’ decline is inevitable. But chemical analysis shows traces of the Permian-age rocks in the spring water. Rainfall in the mountains where those rocks are exposed – the Apache and Wylie mountains, east of Van Horn – may recharge the springs. But the springs also pulse after heavy rains in the Davis Mountains.
Kelsch’s Sul Ross colleague, Dr. Kevin Urbanczyk, is working with interested landowners to install groundwater-monitoring devices. They could reveal the direction in which underground water is moving, whether it rises after rain and, critically, where recharge may be taking place.
“The identification of recharge zones can be considered the holy grail,” Kelsch said, “because then we can protect it. Then we can add infiltration. We can put features like medialunas and beaver dam analogs to try to capture more of the rainwater instead of letting it run off.”
Identifying spring recharge zones in the Davis Mountains would be a breakthrough. But the Davis are also the northern edge of what’s called the Igneous Aquifer. And that aquifer provides drinking water for Alpine, Marfa, Fort Davis and surrounding rural areas.
Kelsch has done extensive research on the fault systems that create the region’s mountainous landscape. Beneath the surface, those faults determine the movement of water. With her students, Kelsch plans to begin tracing the Igneous Aquifer’s hidden passages.
“I'm interested in the Igneous Aquifer because I live on it,” she said, “and my community lives on it and it's very, very cursorily understood at this point – not by anyone's fault, but for the complexity of the aquifer itself, the complexity of the rock that hosts this water.”
Kelsch will also study the Santa Elena Aquifer. Though it’s never been officially recognized, it’s the water source for Terlingua, Study Butte and Big Bend National Park.
Groundwater is mysterious. It’s also foundational – for our swimming holes, and for the water in our taps.
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