McKinney Springs

McKinney Springs was a community in the McKinney Hills two miles southeast of the spring of the same name within Big Bend National Park in southern Brewster County. The spring and the community were named in the 1880s for rancher E. L. Gage's foreman T. Devine McKinney, whose later discovery of a major cinnabar deposit near Terlingua helped make that town the leading mercury producer in the nation. Gage kept a herd of cattle at the spring for several years before moving closer to the railhead at Marathon. W. K. Ellis built a candelilla wax factory there around 1913; he moved the Boquillas post office to the site and changed its name to McKinney Springs. When Ellis moved on to Glenn Spring in 1914, he took the post office with him, although he did not bother to change its name; thus the post office in Glenn Spring, which remained open until 1921, was officially known as McKinney Springs. The wax factory at McKinney Springs operated until 1919, but the community was soon overshadowed by Glenn Spring. By the early 1970s nothing remained of the McKinney Springs community but ruins.