The Pecos River in Literature and Folklore

The Pecos River, known for mineral-thick waters and sudden floods, winds through Texas toward the Rio Grande and has been widely immortalized in writing and folklore. Historian J. Evetts Haley and folklorist J. Frank Dobie called it “a strange river” and “a barricade,” while Zane Grey wrote that, 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. Serving as a natural border for several counties, the Pecos is also seen as the place where the mythic Wild West begins, the land that produced Judge Roy Bean and Pecos Bill.

Box Canyon, Texas · United States