When Balmorhea pool threw a party for its grand opening over two days in June 1936, celebrants took part in all kinds of activities. A poster from the event breathlessly lists them: a bathing-girl revue, swimming competitions, something called fancy diving, a free barbecue lunch, a baseball game, speedboat races on nearby Lake Balmorhea, and not one but two big dances.
That sounds like a lot of action. Honestly, I prefer my visits to Balmorhea—both the vast, gin-clear pool (which famously ranks among the world’s largest spring-fed pools) and the West Texas town you pass through to get there—on the sleepier side, which is why I like to go in winter. The state park packs people in on sultry summer days, but, like cold-blooded mosquitoes, all those humans disperse come December.
Now that the park’s on-site lodging, the San Solomon Springs Courts, has reopened after a seven-year closure for renovations and the pool and campground are up and running again, a winter or springtime visit holds even more appeal. Staying overnight means more time to hang out and soak in the solitude.
According to Texas Parks and Wildlife officials, Balmorhea got its name from the combined surnames of four men who ran an irrigation company in the area more than a century ago: E. D. Balco, H. R. Morrow, Joe Rhea, and John Rhea. Mexican farmers built the first canals to irrigate crops in the nineteenth century, and the Bureau of Reclamation constructed its own canal in the 1920s.
The springs at the pool generate about 15 million gallons of water a day, which fill the pool and then flow through downtown via a narrow canal. Stop to get a closer look and admire a cottonwood tree, its trunk fatter than a Clydesdale horse’s belly, that bends over the canal. A little gazebo makes a good vantage point. The canal supplies water used to grow alfalfa and cotton crops on about 10,000 acres of surrounding farmland.
The water eventually makes its way to Balmorhea Lake, an almost-six-hundred-acre reservoir two miles south of town. The spot is less than scenic, but it’s recovering from multiple algal blooms that occurred prior to 2014. Anglers can fish for bass, catfish, or crappie.
Left: The newly renovated San Solomon Springs Courts. Pam LeBlanc
Top: A room at San Solomon Springs Courts. Pam LeBlanc
Stay a Spell
Texas Parks and Wildlife officials announced plans for the renovation of the San Solomon Springs Courts, at Balmorhea State Park, in 2016, and construction began the following fall, but renovations didn’t go as planned. Instead of reopening in 2019, as expected, the project hit delay after delay. The work coincided with a ten-month emergency closure of the swimming pool—one of the pool’s walls had eroded—and another closure to repair the septic system. As with many other aging buildings in state and national parks, where decades of underfunding and “deferred maintenance” have left infrastructure crumbling, the Courts’ eighteen guest rooms needed a lot of work—even more than park staff had anticipated. “The initial project was to reroof those eighteen rooms, and once into the renovation period, they started realizing there was more work that needed to be done,” says Torrey Bonham, the park superintendent.
The project transitioned into a top-to-bottom overhaul of the historic adobe structure. Workers modernized the plumbing and electric systems and capped the fireplaces to reduce fire risk. Roofs were repaired. New linens and mattresses went in, and the rooms finally reopened in August 2024. Reservations at Texas state parks can often be hard to come by, but I had no trouble booking a room with a queen bed and a separate sitting room for a Sunday night in November, and the suite cost just $135, plus taxes. Only one other room was occupied during my stay.
The Civilian Conservation Corps built the motel in the 1930s, and staying in the charming historic building, with its adobe walls and low-slung red roof, feels like road-tripping back to the days before chain hotels. Some rooms feature refinished original wood floors; others have floors of stained concrete. Furniture handcrafted by CCC members has been repaired and refurbished. Two units are handicap-accessible. And the park’s 34-site tent and RV campground also underwent a renovation. Look for a new restroom, new paving, and upgraded water and electric systems.
The best rooms in the Courts are those that back up to the canal that flows out of the pool toward the restored ciénaga, or wetlands, near the campground. It’s worth walking over there if you’re into birds. We took an evening dip in the pool and then admired a great horned owl perched in a tree overlooking the parking lot.
Balmorhea fans should stay tuned for more developments at the park. In 2020 the state purchased land, including the hill behind the campground, that will eventually expand the size of the park from 108 acres to 751 acres. No word on when that land might open to the public, but preliminary plans call for hiking trails.
Take a Dip
You won’t find big crowds in the spring-fed swimming pool in the winter, but that’s the point. Recently, when the air temperature dropped to 44 degrees and the winds kicked up to 40 miles per hour, my husband and I were the only ones who went for an early-morning swim. That might sound daring to some readers, but the dip was balmy compared to a couple of January swims we’ve taken at the pool, which covers 1.3 acres. The water temperature hovers between 72 and 76 degrees year-round, and when it’s cold outside, hopping in feels like diving into a warm bowl of soup. But you do eventually have to get out, and the dash to the bathhouse for a hot shower can be brisk.
The pool, which has a natural bottom in most spots, plunges down about 25 feet at its deepest point. Look closely, and you might spot turtles, catfish, and, if you’re lucky, two endangered fish, the Pecos gambusia and the Comanche Springs pupfish. You might even see a scuba diver or two, who are welcome if they each present a certification card and dive with a buddy. Don’t leave without taking a flying leap off the high dive. It’s one of the few remaining public high dives in Texas.
Stroll the Town
The hamlet of Balmorhea (population 462) is tiny, but there are still some gems to explore—including literal ones. Drop by Balmorhea Rock Shop, at 102 S. Main, to sort through shelves filled with everything from Balmorhea agate to something called pudding stone, plus crystals and more exotic imports in all shades of red, black, brown, green, and orange. You can even buy geodes by the pound. A shop employee will cut them open for you. “It’s like candy,” says Sheila Reid, who manages the mom-and-pop shop, owned by Jim and Sue Franklin. (The Franklins also run a rock shop in nearby Fort Davis.) “You never know what you’re going to get when you break [a geode] open.”
Reid showed me the back room, where rocks are cut, polished, and set in jewelry, and led me into a side workshop, where Jamaican artist Aldeene Sterling was creating elaborate carvings of sea turtles and fish from sections of dead cedar trees as reggae music played in the background.
We’d been told to stop by Jo’s Bar & Grill, at 207 Galveston, for Tex-Mex, brisket, burgers, and beer, but the restaurant closes on Sundays and Mondays, when we were there. Instead, we followed the signs to “The Cutest Restaurant in Balmorhea” and wound up at La Cueva de Oso, where we dove into comforting plates of cheese and beef enchiladas and a basket of chips and salsa.
Another good option is Matta’s Burger Place, at 116 S. Main. We ordered cheeseburgers and onion rings from the window for lunch the next day and ate them at a picnic table outside.
Contemplate in the Calera Chapel
Three miles west of the park, on FM 3078, a small white chapel trimmed in blue stands out against the mud-and-straw-colored desert. Calera Chapel, originally an adobe structure called Mission Mary, served mostly Mexican American ranchers and farmers in the area in the early 1900s. The building’s adobe was plastered over in the late thirties or the forties, but by the late forties it stood abandoned, occupied only by the horses, cows, and bats that wandered in to seek shelter.
A Frenchwoman named Kate Vigneron, who had moved to the area after visiting her brother’s ranch, saw the chapel and decided to lead an effort to restore it. The landowners donated the property, and by 2003 the structure had been replastered, painted, and restored to its former grandeur.
We stopped by on our way out of town, swinging open the heavy wooden doors to find shafts of light streaming in from skylights in the ceiling and a huge wooden cross hanging on the back wall. Large pieces of concrete salvaged from abandoned irrigation ditches make up a mosaic-style floor, and a bell donated by the town of Pecos hangs in a small tower on the roof. Outside, visitors have left painted rocks at the doorstep. The exterior back wall was left unplastered, so you can see the building’s stony skeleton. The wind tried to whip the hat off my head, but I held on and enjoyed a few minutes of silence.
