▶ Quick Facts

Designation	National Historic Site
Established	July 17, 2024 (authorized October 17, 2022)
Location	501 South Abbott Street, Marfa, Texas 79843
Park Size	0.77 acres
Structures	1909 Adobe Schoolhouse; 1927 Band Hall
Operating Years	1909–1965 (56 years as segregated school)
Hours	Saturdays & Sundays, 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM CST (weekday tours by advance request)
Admission	Free
NPS Unit Number	430th unit of the National Park System
Managed By	NPS, in partnership with the Blackwell School Alliance
Nearby Parks	Big Bend National Park (~90 mi south), Fort Davis NHS (~24 mi north)
Contact	432-426-3224 ext. 223 | nps.gov/blsc

▶ The History of Blackwell School

Marfa in the Late 19th Century

Marfa came into existence in 1883 as a water stop and freight station along the Southern Pacific Railroad in the high desert of Presidio County, West Texas. The town sits at roughly 4,700 feet elevation, 45 miles from the Rio Grande and the U.S.-Mexico border. From the start, the community reflected the demographic reality of the region: a significant population of Mexican and Mexican American families alongside Anglo settlers, but with the social hierarchies common to the post-Reconstruction American Southwest.

Marfa’s first school opened in 1885 and initially served all children. Within seven years, the town built a separate school for Anglo children, leaving the original building for everyone else. By 1909, the Marfa school board authorized funds for a new two-room adobe schoolhouse exclusively for children of Mexican descent. That building, constructed on South Abbott Street, is what visitors see today.

De Facto Segregation

Texas law, in 1909, mandated the separation of Black and white students. It said nothing specific about students of Mexican descent. The 1876 Texas Constitution categorized Mexican Americans as legally white, yet Marfa, like school districts across Texas and the broader Southwest, simply chose to segregate them anyway. School administrators justified the practice by labeling Hispanic students “intellectually inferior” and claiming language deficiencies regardless of individual ability. This was de facto segregation, written by prejudice rather than statute.

The situation was not unique to Marfa. Across Texas and the American Southwest, school districts created what they called “Mexican schools,” limiting Hispanic children to underfunded, understaffed facilities that operated on the premise that these students needed only a basic education before entering manual labor. Resources ran thin: outdated textbooks, substandard furniture, and classrooms staffed mostly by Anglo teachers, many of whom spoke no Spanish.

Principal Jesse Blackwell and School Growth

In 1922, Jesse Blackwell became principal of what was then called the Ward School or Mexican School. Born in 1871 in Rusk County, Texas, Blackwell had worked his family’s 500-acre farm as a teenager before attending college in summer sessions and beginning a teaching career in 1890. When he arrived in Marfa, the school held one building and roughly 120 students in grades one through eight.

Over his 25-year tenure, Blackwell expanded the campus substantially. By the time he retired in 1947, the school covered five acres and four buildings, serving more than 600 students at peak enrollment in the late 1940s. He established a Spanish-speaking interscholastic league connecting Mexican schools across the region and raised academic standards. In 1940 the school was named in his honor. Blackwell was, by most accounts, a dedicated educator within a fundamentally inequitable system.

The Burial of Spanish

Students at Blackwell had spoken their first language, Spanish, from day one. The school’s instruction was English-only from the beginning, but for decades Spanish still moved through the schoolyard and hallways. In 1954, teacher Evelyn Davis changed that. She banned Spanish on campus and marked its prohibition with a ceremony. Students wrote “I will not speak Spanish in school” on slips of paper. A Spanish dictionary was placed in a cardboard coffin. Children wore pallbearer costumes. The box was lowered into a hole dug at the base of the school’s flagpole and buried. Davis called it “Burying Mr. Spanish.”

From that day forward, speaking Spanish at Blackwell meant punishment. Students were paddled, given demerits, or sent home. Former student Maggie Nuñez Marquez recalled being spanked and kept home for three days for failing to comply. The ceremony forced children to perform the erasure of their own cultural identity, in front of classmates, in a school that already told them every day they were worth less than the students at the Anglo school across town.

Community, Pride, and Resilience

What happened inside Blackwell School was more than institutional harm. Students also built something real together. The school fielded football teams, including a six-man squad that won its first game in September 1950. The marching band was known for its quality, with a PTA that ran carnivals and fundraisers to pay for instruments and uniforms. “Our band uniforms were just beautiful,” remembered Maggie Marquez. The school operated at the center of Marfa’s Hispanic community, and that community poured itself into it.

When Blackwell students eventually transferred to Marfa High School after integration, many excelled. Former student Lionel Salgado, who attended Blackwell in the 1940s, recalled: “Our teachers were really good and kind, and a lot of those kids were bright kids. They’d get up to Marfa High School and be valedictorian or salutatorian.” The prevailing assumption that Hispanic students had neither the ability nor the desire to continue their education turned out to be exactly that: an assumption built by segregation, not reality.

Integration, Closure, and Near-Erasure

Despite the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and a 1948 Texas case (Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District) that found segregated education of students of Mexican descent unconstitutional, Marfa’s schools did not integrate until 1965. When the Marfa Independent School District finally merged its students, Blackwell’s students were told to pick up their chairs and desks and carry the furniture themselves to their new school about a mile away.

The school closed. MISD sold most of the campus to the Marfa Housing Authority in 1969, and the other buildings were demolished. By the 1970s only two structures remained: the original 1909 schoolhouse and the 1927 Band Hall. By the early 2000s MISD was considering selling or demolishing those too. Most of the official school records had been lost. The physical evidence of 56 years of segregated education in Marfa was on the verge of disappearing entirely.

▶ Significance and National Recognition

The Blackwell School Alliance

In 2006, a group of former Blackwell students learned the building might be demolished. They met with the Marfa school board, asked for a reprieve, and formed the Blackwell School Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the buildings and the stories attached to them. The following year they signed a 99-year lease on the property. Alumni began donating photographs, yearbooks, trophies, uniforms, and memorabilia. The Alliance converted the two remaining buildings into a community museum.

In 2007, the Alliance organized a ceremony they called “Unburying Mr. Spanish.” Alumni brought a Spanish dictionary to the school grounds, placed it in a small coffin, dug a hole, and then immediately pulled it back out. Sally Williams lifted the dictionary over her head. Fifty-three years after Davis’s ceremony had buried the Spanish language, the community reclaimed it.

A National Park is Born

The Alliance’s work attracted national attention. In December 2019, the Blackwell School was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. On October 17, 2022, President Biden signed the Blackwell School National Historic Site Act, authorizing the site as a unit of the National Park System. The legislation passed with bipartisan support.

Authorization alone was not enough. The law required NPS to acquire the 0.77-acre tract containing the schoolhouse before officially establishing the park. The National Park Foundation funded the land purchase in June 2024. On July 17, 2024, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland formally established Blackwell School National Historic Site as the 430th unit of the National Park System. It became only the second NPS unit specifically dedicated to Hispanic American history, after César E. Chávez National Monument.

▶ Touring Blackwell School

The Two Buildings

The site consists of two structures on a compact lot. The 1909 Schoolhouse is a one-story adobe building with 24-inch-thick plastered walls on a stone foundation, a modified hip roof, and a front-gabled entry. It has three rooms. This is the original building authorized by the Marfa school board in 1909 and the only building in the United States known to survive that is directly associated with the segregated education of students of Mexican descent. The 1927 Band Hall is a smaller adobe classroom building added to accommodate the school’s growing student population. Both structures retain their original adobe construction and clay tile work.

Inside, visitors find interpretive panels with quotes and stories from former students and teachers, photographs spanning the school’s decades of operation, and memorabilia donated by alumni. Yearbooks, band uniforms, trophies, and personal items fill the space. The NPS continues building out the interpretive program in partnership with the Blackwell School Alliance and the local community.

Marfa as a Destination

Marfa draws visitors from around the world, primarily for its contemporary art scene. Since the 1970s, when artist Donald Judd relocated here and began installing large-scale permanent works, the town has grown into a distinctive cultural hub. Galleries, artist residencies, and Judd’s Chinati Foundation fill a community of roughly 1,700 people. The surrounding Chihuahuan Desert landscape is striking, and the area served as the filming location for No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. The Blackwell School adds a layer to Marfa that the art scene alone cannot provide.

▶ Know Before You Go

Hours: The site is open Saturdays and Sundays year-round from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM CST. Weekday group tours are available by advance request, with at least one month’s notice required. Contact the park at 432-426-3224 ext. 223 or through nps.gov/blsc.

Admission: Free. No entrance fee.

Getting There: Marfa sits on U.S. Highway 90 in Presidio County, West Texas. It is roughly 190 miles southeast of El Paso, 60 miles west of Alpine, and 24 miles south of Fort Davis. The Blackwell School is at 501 South Abbott Street in a residential part of town. Nearest commercial airport is Midland International Air and Space Port (MAF), about 150 miles northeast.

Weather: Marfa sits at 4,688 feet in the Chihuahuan Desert. Summers are warm with afternoon thunderstorms, common July through September. Winters are mild but can bring freezing temperatures and occasional snow. Spring and fall offer the most comfortable visiting conditions. Dress in layers and carry water year-round.

Accessibility: The site is small and on relatively level ground. Contact the park directly for the latest accessibility information as NPS continues to develop the site.

Cell Service: Marfa has limited cell and internet service. Download offline maps before leaving a major city. The NPS app supports offline park information.

Nearby Parks: Fort Davis National Historic Site is about 24 miles north on U.S. 17. Big Bend National Park is roughly 90 miles to the south. Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico are both accessible on a multi-day West Texas itinerary.

▶ First Encounters: Blackwell School NHS

Watch Ranger PamPaw’s First Encounters episode from Blackwell School National Historic Site — a first look at a place most people have never heard of and won’t soon forget.

▶ Further Exploration

Before you go or after you return, these resources go deeper into the Blackwell School story and the history it represents.

• NPS Official Site — Blackwell School NHS — Hours, alerts, maps, and the latest visitor information direct from the National Park Service.
• The Blackwell School Alliance — The alumni-founded nonprofit whose work made this park possible. Oral histories, documentary resources, and ongoing education outreach.
• Texas State Historical Association — Blackwell School Entry — A well-sourced historical overview covering the school’s founding, Jesse Blackwell’s tenure, and the Alliance’s preservation efforts.
• Texas Monthly: “Marfa’s Blackwell School Has a Painful Past” — Sterry Butcher’s on-the-ground reporting with alumni voices and community history.
• Smithsonian Magazine — Blackwell School National Park Site — Accessible overview of the school’s history and its significance within the NPS system.
• National Park Foundation — Blackwell School — Background on the land acquisition process that made the park official in 2024.
• NPS American Latino Heritage Program — The NPS program that connects Blackwell School to the broader effort to include Latino history across the park system.