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> The first historical record of the Marfa lights is that in 1883 a young cowhand, Robert Reed Ellison, saw a flickering light while he was driving cattle throu

> The first historical record of the Marfa lights is that in 1883 a young cowhand, Robert Reed Ellison, saw a flickering light while he was driving cattle through Paisano Pass and wondered if it was the campfire of Apache Indians. Other settlers told him they often saw the lights, but that when they investigated they found no ashes or other evidence of a campsite. So it wasn't car headlights in 1883 and "no ashes or other evidence of a campsite".

icedistilled 7y ago
>Lights in a place where you can see very far away tends to confuse our perception of scale, distance and speed. Did the campfire smoke spell out their exact location to nicely make up for the distorted distance perspective for lights at night?
crispyambulance 7y ago
> So it wasn't car headlights in 1883 and "no ashes or other evidence of a campsite". ... and also not little green men from Mars nor up-close sightings of ball lighting in 120 years. The distances here are large (potentially 10's of miles with mountains) and the phenomena occur at dusk/night/dawn. It would be very hard to localize such lights by merely eyeballing it and then walking for hours over rugged desert to where it looked like it came from.