Chisos Mining Co. Motel — Hotel in Manuel Benavides

Terlingua has changed a lot over the years since I started visiting in 1990. Now you can sleep in a plastic bubble for $500/nt. Or a tipi with a hole in the roof for $200. Or you can book a super-trendy casita filled with eclectic art, but no indoor plumbing or electricity (didn't catch that in the fine print, did ya?), for $400/nt on AirBnB.

I keep coming back to Chisos Mining Co, year after year, because they offer the best value and room selection in the entire region, with all the amenities you can possible get in Terlingua (ie, indoor plumbing, electricity, private bathroom, and air conditioning). If you just need a tiny room for the night when passing through...they have it. If you need a house that will sleep 10 people and have a fully-equipped kitchen...they have it. And all at the best value in the area; their prices are ALWAYS reasonable, even during high season, and I am almost always able to get a room here when I book inside a week. The front desk staff are SUPER friendly...provided you approach them with kindness and respect. (The same can be said of virtually anyone in Terlingua. Come at them with attitude, and you'll get that 10x back!)

If it's your first time to Terlingua, you must understand that this place is NOT like where you live. This is still very much a frontier. Electricity and water are USUALLY working. Your cell phone probably won't. You may be able to make a call (drive to a high point!), but don't count on text messages coming or going, and good luck with cellular data! You can't flush toilet paper down the toilets here. You put it into a wastebasket next to the toilet. (Don't worry, it's not smelly or gross, like it sounds the first time.) Wanna secretly flush it down the toilet anyway thinking no one will know? You may get a note on your door that ALL toilets site-wide are turned off for 48 hours while the clog is fixed, and then you have to go searching for a toilet. (I guarantee it will not be as nice as the one in your room!) Need WiFi? While it's improving year after year in the region, and improving at this hotel at well, don't COUNT on it working, and it certainly won't be as fast as yours back home.

If you can take these restrictions in stride, I encourage you to go a step further and get to know some of the folks who live here. They may be guarded and suspicious at first, but the remoteness and difficulty of life in this region draws the most fascinating people in the world to live here. Approach folks with a casual smile and friendly words, and the doors will open. You'll hear stories the likes of which you only see in movies. Terlingua is a truly magical place, and Chisos Mining Co has been my choice of places to stay for decades. It's my home in...

Unsafe stairs, especially for elderly or children

The worst thing about this property, is an illegal, not built to commercial building code stairway landing. It's unsafe. It's too small to meet code. less than 4 feet by 4 feet, and the stair heights are not uniform, as required by code. My stairs went up 18 inches in height to a landing, with no guardrail. It needs a guardrail on 2 sides, and has none. You walk up the steps from the side, not straight on, and then at the top of the landing, turn either left or right to face your door. My brother was standing on the landing, and he stepped back to let me pass and fell off the landing. He landed flat on his back, hitting his right elbow and twisting his left knee on the way down. It pretty much ruined his trip to Big Bend. The nearest hospital is 100 miles away. This would not have happened if there had been guardrails to prevent falls.

Good things: The bed and pillows were comfortable. The heater/AC unit worked very well and the HVAC wasn't too noisy.

Bad things: The room had a moldy smell to it, probably because of very old worn carpet that got wet. There is a 3-to-4-inch hole in my room covered with carpet. You step on the carpet and the floor gives way. The entire room creaks when walking on the floor. The walls are paper thin and you can hear the people in the room next to you on either side. The toilet area smells like sewer gas. The motel gives you a big stainless-steel container to put your toilet paper and/or tampons into and then you get to empty it into their dumpsters. No toilet paper allowed in the toilet.

Not that I care too much about TV while in Big Bend country, you only have 3 TV stations, Fox News on channel 2 and the same TNT station twice on channels 4 and 6, running in standard definition on an HD flat screen LCD TV. On channels 2 and 4, there is a terrible, annoying 120 Hz buzzing that makes listening very tiring, as you have to strain to hear what they are saying over...

People giving this place terrible reviews are used to a Fairfield Inn or the like as their baseline for measuring accomodations. This motel is more like a mom-and-pop operation from the 1960s (of which I stayed in plenty). It is very basic - you get a room for the night, and that's pretty much it.||||At check-in (which was pleasant, with an informative clerk who had a lot of good local info) you are given a plastic bag containing one each bath, hand and face towels, a tiny bar of soap and a roll of septic-safe toilet paper, plus two purple towels for cleaning makeup off your face or bugs off your car windshield. Those are the only amenities provided. Ice, water, drinks, snacks, etc., can be purchased in the office. There are also a lot of unique souvenirs available, such as rocks, local crafts, etc.||||We stayed in one of the individual rooms, which had a full-sized bed with well-worn sheets, one thin blanket, two very flat pillows and a comforter. The room and bathroom were both clean - in fact cleaner than the places we stayed at in Alpine. The wall-mounted heating and AC unit worked well. Although it was noisy, it did cool the room down quickly when we got back after a day of exploring. I didn't notice any real noise from adjacent rooms, although the bikers down the row having loud conversations in the parking lot got annoying. There are chairs outside each unit so you can enjoy the sunrise and night skies.||||The main thing to be aware of is the bathroom - there is a sign above the toilet telling you in no uncertain terms to put used toilet paper in the lidded metal bucket next to the toilet, NOT in the toilet bowl itself before you flush. I get it. They're in the desert; it's hard to make septic systems work properly in that climate; deal with it and move on or don't bother...