Langtry was originally established in 1882 by the Southern Pacific Railroad as a grading camp called Eagle Nest.[2] It was later renamed for George Langtry, an engineer and foreman, who supervised the immigrant Chinese work crews building the railroad in the area.
Roy Bean arrived soon after completion of the railroad, and set up a tent saloon on company land. He later built a wooden structure for his saloon, which he called The Jersey Lilly after the well-known British actress Lillie Langtry.[3] She was a native of the island of Jersey. (Née Le Breton, Langtry was her married name, and she was not related to George Langtry.) Bean used the saloon as his headquarters when authorized as a justice of the peace and notary public. He called himself the "Law West of the Pecos". After a notable career as justice of the peace, Bean died in 1903.
In 1884, the town was authorized a post office. In 1892, it had a general store, a railroad depot, and two saloons. Langtry began to decline after the highway was moved slightly north in the early 1900s for a more direct east-west route. Once bypassed, the town's businesses lost revenue and jobs. In the 1920s, Southern Pacific moved its facilities away, more jobs were lost, and the town population dwindled to 50.
By the 1970s, its population dipped as low as 40. Tourism to the Judge Roy Bean Visitor Center continues to keep the town alive.
There are no transportation services that directly serve Langtry. The nearest transportation option is served by Amtrak’s Sunset Limited, which passes through the town on Union Pacific tracks on the Sanderson Subdivision, but makes no stop. A stop is located 60 miles (96 km) northwest in Sanderson, or 60 miles (96 km) southeast in Del Rio.
Education
It was formerly in the Langtry Common School District, but sometime prior to 1976 the Langtry district merged into the Comstock Independent School District.[4] In 1964 Langtry's student count exceeded 60.[5]
Found on Mile Canyon right near Langtry is Bonfire Shelter, an archeological site that has yielded bones from butchered animals, including bison, driven to their deaths over the cliff by Native Americans thousands of years ago.[7]
Popular culture
The Westerner (1940) is a film featuring Walter Brennan as Judge Roy Bean and Gary Cooper as a fictional interloper. It repeated the myth of the town's being named for Lillie Langtry.
The Wild Bunch (1969) has a passing reference to Langtry as a place where Freddie Sykes (Edmond O'Brien) had been active as a desperado many years before the events depicted the film.
Lillie (1978), a TV miniseries about Lillie Langtry, was produced by Britain's London Weekend Television, also related the myth of the Texas town's name.
Judge Roy Bean (1955–1956), a Western television series set in Langtry, but filmed in Pioneertown, California, aired in syndication with Edgar Buchanan in the title role.[8]
Roy Bean appears as a main character in Le Juge, part of the Lucky Luke series.
The Other Roswell: UFO Crash on the Texas-Mexico Border (2008) is a nonfiction book about a reported UFO crash at Langtry in 1955.
The town plays a major role in R.A. Lafferty's science-fiction novel Fourth Mansions.
Langtry is mentioned in the Cormac McCarthy novel No Country for Old Men. Langtry could be the hometown of the novel's protagonist Llewelyn Moss.
Langtry and the surrounding area have long been favorite hunting grounds for legions of amateur and professional herpetologists looking for a variety of reptiles endemic to the area.
The episode "A Picture of a Lady" in the Western series Death Valley Days depicts Judge Roy Bean renaming the Texas town of Vinegaroon as Langtry in honor of Lillie Langtry.
Langtry inspired the fictional town of Langtree in the video game Wandersong.[9]
Climate
Langtry has a hot semiarid (BSh) climate.
Climate data for Langtry, TX 1981-2010, extremes 1969-2017
^Turpin, Solveig A. (November 1, 1994). "Bonfire Shelter". tshaonline.org. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved May 15, 2024.
^Billy Hathorn, "Roy Bean, Temple Houston, Bill Longley, Ranald Mackenzie, Buffalo Bill, Jr., and the Texas Rangers: Depictions of West Texans in Series Television, 1955 to 1967", West Texas Historical Review, Vol. 89 (2013), pp. 109-110
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