It’s unusual to see a diver down sign in the middle of the desert. In Toyahvale, Texas, one is prominent on the facade of the Desert Oasis Dive Shop. Toyahvale is a sleepy burgh in southern Reeves County, where the Permian Basin and the Davis Mountains meet. To the north of Toyahvale, creosote bush flats extend across the arid landscape. High desert mountains jut from the surrounding scrub to the south and west of the shop. Some mountains peak over a mile above sea level and are covered in century plants and an occasional ocotillo.
Location, location, location is the mantra of real estate practitioners, and just to the east of the Toyahvale store is perhaps the best known of all the Texas desert wetlands and unlikeliest of scuba diving destinations: Balmorhea State Park. Drive past on State Highway 17 on any summer day, and you’ll see scores of people enjoying the pool by diving from the two boards or just playing in the water in general.
Pulling into the gates, I tell my wife that this year marks the eleventh year we’ve come to Balmorhea State Park. In my mind, it seems like yesterday, but looking in the rearview mirror to the backseat, the three-year-old that we had in tow our first year is now in her early 20s, and her little brother sitting opposite her was still a year away from being born into our family. I have watched them grow up swimming in the spring-fed waters of this out-of-the-way park in the unlikeliest of places.
I’ve been an enthusiast evangelist of the West Texas oasis. When people ask me for a fun but different family vacation recommendation, Balmorhea is always at the top of my list. Out on the edge of the creosote bush flats where the western Permian Basin meets the Davis Mountains, the swimming pool at Balmorhea is formed by San Solomon Springs - a 20 million gallon of water per day artesian freshwater fountain that floods the man-made, 2-acre swimming pool and the water flows out of the pool and downstream to provide drinking and agricultural water to an otherwise perennially parched landscape.
The spring gets its water from occasional rainfall that erupts over the distant mountains to the west and southwest. The water collects and flows through subterranean fissures and bubbles to the surface about two miles west of the Balmorhea city limits proper. Discovered long ago by Native Americans who roamed the mountains and basins region, the spring once consisted of a small pool surrounded by cattails, rushes, and other aquatic vegetation. In the 1930s, however, under the Civilian Conservation Corps's (CCC) direction, the spring and its natural pool were encased by a concrete retaining wall and flooded. When you swim in the pool today, you benefit from an ambitious project that embarked on nearly eight decades ago.
In the boomerang-shaped swimming area, one end is akin to a traditional swimming pool with a flat concrete bottom. In the rest of the swimming pool, rocks and aquatic vegetation line the bottom. Too deep to touch, most of the natural part of the pool’s bottom ranges from about 10 to 25 feet deep. The vegetation, rocks, and algae help keep the water clean without modern filtration systems or chemicals. Moving water and a natural nitrogen conversion system designed perfectly by Mother Nature helps keep the water crystal clear even at the deepest depths. As such, when you swim, you share the pool with catfish, Mexican Tetra, soft-shelled turtles, and the rare Comanche Springs pupfish.
On a perfect June Saturday, I swim with my kids all day long. We snorkel, jump off the diving boards, and swim around the pool. I even scuba dive in the crystal clear water and photograph rare fish species.
Before The CCC made this place into a recreational mecca, the springs flooded a small basin and created a rare desert wetland in which plants not typically found in the desert thrive. The wetland, called a cienega, is a term used to describe a wet and marshy area where springs bubble from the ground.
San Solomon Springs created the San Solomon Cienega. While the original cienega is gone, the Balmorhea State Park swimming pool now overflows into a man-made canal that flows into a re-creation of the San Solomon Cienega. When you add water to the desert, life abounds.
Around the edge of the cienega, cattails and rushes crowd the wet margins. From the observation deck, you can look into the clear water and see catfish, soft-shelled turtles, Mexican tetra, water snakes, and other aquatic life swimming around. Meanwhile, birds like red-winged blackbirds, green herons, and mud swallows take advantage of the water. At night, bats skim the water’s surface and drink from the rare wetland.
“Cienegas are hotspots for biodiversity,” says Jason Wrinkle, Desert Program Coordinator for the Texas Nature Conservancy. This conservation-based group collaborates with various public and private stakeholders to conserve rare and significant natural places. “These isolated desert wetlands harbor unique species, some found nowhere else on earth, such as the Leon Springs Pupfish, as well as supporting various rare plant species, including the Pecos Sunflower.”
Deep under the surface of the Balmorhea State Park, I’ve been lying still for at least five minutes. The depth gauge on my scuba gear says I’m about twenty feet under. I’m wearing twelve pounds of additional weight in my buoyancy compensator to ensure I’m anything but buoyant. With the air expelled from the vest, the weights in my pack and the heaviness of the tank ensure that I’ll stay put on the bottom for as long as my oxygen holds out.
To my right, six or eight catfish noses head into a hole beneath a shelf of rocks. They mimic the swimming motion, but they don’t move forward. In the abyss where they are pointed, millions of gallons of water entering the pool create a strong and invisible current that the catfish instinctually swim against. I swam over to the spring before I set up for my short-term vigil. Strangely, the water feels like a breeze on my face. Even more strange, the catfish seemed unfazed by my intrusion and continued to swim just inches away from me.
While the main spring is impressive, the complex's minor springs are worth seeing. In several places, the pool’s rocky bottom is interrupted by small sand fields that vigorously bubble as water percolates through the formation. So, I lie prone and wait between the main and some minor springs. All is silent except for the sound of me inhaling air through my regulator, and as I exhale, bubbles rush past my ears and race toward the water’s surface.
The inevitable fogging of my scuba goggles obscures a small vignette of my peripheral vision. Straight ahead, though, I can see fine inches from my face; a Comanche Springs Pupfish guards his tiny piece of aquatic real estate from interlopers.
Around me, shiny and silvery Mexican Tetra circle, hoping, I guess, that I’ll give them a morsel of food. Occasionally, I can feel them nibbling on my ears. Still, other than an occasional distraction, the three-inch fish is harmless. As the tetra swims around me, they occasionally invade the pupfish’s space. Each time, he rushes them and scares them off. Like a tiny, finned pit bull on a leash, he’ll charge a short distance from his bouldery perch and then immediately return from whence he came. All around me, I see others of his ilk doing the same. The behavior is fascinating to study. Even more so when I think about this behavior, it is practiced by this species of fish in only two or three tiny spots in the entire world - and they are all in Texas. The same can be said of the Pecos Gambusia, the Leon Springs Pupfish, and other tiny fish that call these rare springs home.
Aside from the rare fish, other, more common species like largemouth bass inhabit Toyah Creek - a stream that flows from the cienega into Lake Balmorhea. The round lake is a man made impoundment created nearly 100 years ago to help store and provide water from the local springs.
With thousands of square miles of desert surrounding them, the surviving Texas desert wetlands are uncommon and exceedingly rare. While heading through the desert, you can occasionally spot a place where a cienga may be if you see cottonwood trees juxtaposed amongst the creosote bush and prickly pear. Public access to the wetlands is negligible save for the state park.
While the springs are rare and their presence relatively obscure, their economic influence is far-reaching.
As the water flows from San Solomon Cienga, it fills an aqueduct where it flows across the landscape and provides water for agricultural irrigation and municipal uses. Through the Madera Valley around Balmorhea, Texas - where the land should be parched - alfalfa fields verdantly color the landscape and provide a visual respite from the sameness of the western Permian Basin.
Just east of Balmorhea, Sandia Springs lies at the foot of a craggy hilltop. You'd probably drive past the springs unless you knew what you were looking for. I knew what I was looking for and drove past three times before cattails caught my eye.
It’s early spring, and the rare Pecos sunflowers aren’t yet bloomed. Again, I am taken by the fact that of all the places in the world, this sunflower species is only known to exist in two places: where I stand and the Diamond Y spring about 60 miles east of here near Fort Stockton.
It’s easy to see why these wetlands were so valuable in the past and why their value remains unchanged even in this century. Economics aside, the value of this water to the rare species that find hospitable environs in the rare pockets of habitat is immeasurable. As such, a portion of the water from Sandia Springs is used by a local landowner in partnership with Texas Master Naturalist to create a publicly accessible wetland for the benefit of waterfowl and migratory shorebirds.
I am soon headed to the Diamond Y Spring. Although I have yet to see it, I am ready to add it to my list of the rare natural wonders I’ve experienced in Texas.
“The Nature Conservancy purchased Diamond Y Spring Preserve in 1990 to ensure the long-term protection of this rare habitat,” says Wrinkle, explaining that the Nature Conservancy understands that the area is a hotbed of oil and gas exploration. “We work cooperatively with energy companies operating on the property to demonstrate that energy production and conservation can be compatible when both parties are dedicated.”
“Over the years, the Preserve has increased to 3,962 acres in an effort to protect not only the surface flows from the spring but also a portion of the surface watershed. Of course, the source water feeding the springs is of great concern; we are working to better understand the hydrologic flow patterns, potential threats, and opportunities to ensure their long-term protection.”
According to the Nature Conservancy, the Diamond Y Spring Preserve protects one of the largest and last remaining desert springs and its associated marshland systems in West Texas. It provides critically important habitat for two rare desert fishes listed as federally endangered species—the Leon Springs pupfish and the Pecos gambusia. The preserve was designated as critical habitat for the pupfish and is the only remaining natural habitat.
In preparation for my visit, I’ve scouted the property using all the research I can muster: articles, Google Maps, and phone calls with Jason Wrinkle. Nature, in my opinion, should be experienced firsthand. Even though it’s hot and the Basin’s scorching temperatures are unflinching and unforgiving, I trudge on. Like people have done for centuries before me, I look for water in the desert. This place is lonely and isolated; for a brief moment, it’s my private oasis.
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