Lajitas was a village next door to Big Bend National Park, until some rich dude decided to buy it in 2000.
The guy, one Steve Smith, bought the place with the idea of turning it into his private hideaway. Then, as rich dudes do, he started getting ideas. About $100 million dollars worth.
He decided to go with the idea of a rich luxury resort, and he built one, along with a golf course (in an area that gets maybe 5 inches of rain a year) and stables and shopping and etc.
The project went belly up this fall.
I didn't really hate the idea of the place. It was just civilization's further encroachment on the last wild places in Texas. While I find it aesthically annoying, the rational part of my head just figures that's the way things go.
What interests me more here is the kind of messianic vision it would take for the guy to do this. When I first heard about Lajitas resort, my first reaction was, "That makes no sense*." And I'm some dumb schlub who has no plans at real estate development. Surely this guy had some one telling him the same thing.
The resort's golf course and demand for water would stretch the eco-system for the entire area. The place is ridiculously remote, and people out there like things rustic. A few weekend cabins might have worked, but a huge resort?
In the frontier days, various religious groups (or cults) would go to some to some place out in the middle of nowhere to build their utopia. Sometimes they'd create Utah. Most of the time they'd create a dramatic loss of fat and teeth in their possession, along with a side of massive amounts of death.
I suppose it still happens. You have that fundamentalist Mormon guy who built his compound near Eldorado (lovely little city, by the way).
I see that same urge in some people. People who are rich and have reached a point in their life where they want to do something big, but have no idea what it is. Then they go off pouring money into a desert.
*Interesting story. I had just spent the night in a public bathroom at Big Bend park, singing Klingon songs with Jeremy and trying not to freeze. A lot of things didn't make sense to me at that point.
*Different kind of post for this site. Bear with me, just trying things out.
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The golf course has been there since Walter Max Mischer owned it Pre- 2000. It is adjacent to the river. Smith up-graded it but the water it takes to irrigate it has never been a real strain on the ecology.
It just sold to a wealthy Dallas oil and gas man who no doubt has his own strange vision. Smith tried to make the place a hide-out for thee elite and he spent lots and lots of money only to find out if it ain't Cibolo Ranch the " elite" don't want to travel that far to get away. The place has a certain charm that comes with all things that last in the desert.
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