Pecos River in Literature and Folklore
Comstock
Val Verde County, Texas
29 42.341' N 101 21.171' W
Text: Noted for mineral-thick waters and sudden floods, the Pecos River snakes through Texas on its way to the Rio Grande. Historian J. Evetts Haley and folklorist J. Frank Dobie, who called it "a strange river," and a "barricade," are among many who have immortalized the Pecos in writing. Zane Grey wrote, "Rising clear and cold in the mountains of northern New Mexico, its pure waters cut through rough country that changed its flood to turbid red." Storytellers have likened the river and the arid land along it to hell, death and violence. A natural border for several counties, the Pecos is where the mythic Wild West begins, the land that produced the legendary Judge Roy Bean and fabled Pecos Bill.