Biohazard Cleanup Near South Marfa Marfa, TX

Marfa is a small city in the high desert of the Trans-Pecos in far West Texas and the county seat of Presidio County.

Marfa was founded in the early 1880s as a railroad water stop (1883) and became the Presidio County seat in 1885.

The town was named for Marfa Strogoff, a character in Jules Verne's novel Michael Strogoff — not, as local legend long claimed, for a character in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

Marfa sits at about 4,700 feet in elevation in the Chihuahuan Desert between the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park, giving it a semiarid climate with hot summers, cool winters, and wide day-to-night temperature swings.

Marfa's population peaked at 3,909 in 1930 and has declined almost every decade since; the 2020 census counted 1,788 residents in 838 households.

The mysterious Marfa Lights — glowing orbs that twinkle, split apart, melt together, and vanish on clear nights toward the Chinati Mountains — were first recorded in 1883, and a public viewing area sits about nine miles east of town.

Marfa celebrates the phenomenon with the Marfa Lights Festival, held each Labor Day weekend with a parade, food and craft booths, and street dances.

During World War II, the Marfa Army Air Field trained several thousand pilots as well as many of the Army's chemical mortar battalions before closing in 1945.

Minimalist artist Donald Judd moved to Marfa from New York in 1971 and began buying buildings, ranches, and the decommissioned Fort D. A. Russell to install his artwork permanently.

Judd's Chinati Foundation opened in 1986 on the old Fort D. A. Russell grounds and now occupies more than 30 buildings in Marfa, with permanent large-scale installations by 13 artists.