What happened
According to local tradition, the first witness was a young cowboy who, while driving cattle in 1883, saw flickering lights at night and took them for Apache campfires. That account, however, is known only from later retellings, and the first widely read article about the lights appeared in 1957 in “Coronet” magazine. The lights are viewed from a widened shoulder of U.S. Route 90, about 15 km east of Marfa, looking toward the Chinati Mountains: they appear, split, merge, change color, and go out. The town has built a viewing area there, and a festival devoted to the phenomenon is held every year. Amateur observers and scientists have carried out long-term measurements by the roadside with cameras and spectrometers.
Witnesses
Residents, ranchers, and thousands of tourists visiting the viewing area; the lights have been filmed by amateurs and research teams.
Explanations and hypotheses
In 2004 a group of physics students from the University of Texas at Dallas linked most of the lights to the headlights of cars traveling on U.S. Route 67 between Marfa and Presidio. Observations conducted in 2000–2008 indicate that the image of the lights is distorted by layers of air at different temperatures, typical of the desert. Proponents of the mystery point to accounts predating the spread of automobiles, but their reliability cannot be verified today.
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.
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