"Haul that trash to the caliche pit," a construction foreman told his "gofers."
"Let's go out to the caliche pit and sight in our rifles and then bust a bunch of bottles with our pistols," a gun collector told his buddy.
"Let's go down to the caliche pit and catch frogs," a young boy begged his friends.
"I'm going out to the caliche pit and load the truck full of big rocks to build a raised flower bed," a husband told his wife.
We have hundreds of caliche pits, but too often their only use is as illegal dumps. Several have been filled in by construction debris, including one that used to fill with water after rain. One local caliche pit first became a water park and is now a commercial paintball war games site. Caliche pits are part of west Texas life. Caliche pits are everywhere. Ninety-nine percent of them are on private land, and not all of the folks that visit caliche pits have permission. Of the four people quoted above, only one had permission. Each year I visit caliche pits for a different purpose - I am an amateur naturalist.
I like caliche pits so much, I have a miniature one - 90 feet long 10 feet wide and nine feet deep. I originally used it as an underground greenhouse, but now it is a xeriscape garden where I have planted arroyo sweetwood, bigtooth maple, pinyon, winterfat, chamisia, santolina, Wright's eupatorium, sundrops, blue salvia and other blooming plants. Deborah and I have built a campfire and then slept the night under the stars in it. We are not the only ones who think caliche pits are worth camping in, for I have found old fire rings surrounded by board benches in at least two pits on private property.
In the vein of utilizing existing caliche pits, back in the 1980s Katie Heck and I looked at a big caliche pit as a potential site for an arboretum as part of gathering ideas for one of Midland's "Master Plans." The big caliche pit along the south side of Interstate 20 between Rankin Highway and Old Lamesa Road catches my eye for a place to develop some sort of recreational facility - mountain bike trails, or ponds with shade trees and picnic benches. And for that matter, the forest on the southwest corner of the junction of I-20 and the Garden City Highway could be developed as a little park for travelers needing a break - but we're talking caliche pits.
In most caliche pits, it pays to be careful. Rattlesnakes like the big piles of rock rubble. At one caliche pit a visitor collected 30 shed skins to donate to the Sibley Center. One caliche pit not far from Midland has an isolated population of "mountain boomers," also known as collared lizards. It is a mystery how the population arrived there, for I have not seen others of the species within 20 miles. That particular caliche pit also has some Edward's Limestone rock, full of fossils. And since it has limestone, it also has at least one plant species that I have not found elsewhere in the county. Several rocky outcroppings in the county have innocence, dutchman's breeches, caliche sundrops and other such habitat specific species, but mountain parsley is only found at that site.
A ledge with an overhang in one caliche pit was the home to generations of great horned owls. The local birders were heartbroken when somebody decided to use the owls and their babies as targets - and owls have never used the ledge again. But the birders have found the big owls in other pits since then, but the sites have not been as permanent. Baby owls are ugly-cute, fuzzy big-eyed creatures. Other pits that fill with water after rains have afforded us other wonderful sightings.
The only Clark's Grebe ever to visit Midland (and one of the few ever seen east of the Pecos River) stayed in the pit we call the Gallinule Pond for yet another unusual water-loving bird from the Gulf Coast once found there. Streamside pinks, a cheerful little wildflower and the glorious bluebells that many folks plant in their gardens, have also been found at that particular pit. And not too far away, in a nearby pit with giant sloping rocks that form a network of "caves" has been a home to generations of beautiful red foxes. They seem to know folks with binoculars around their necks are not cause for flight, and their pups amuse us with the playful antics on early morning field trips. That same caliche pit also has featured a groove-billed ani, a big-billed black bird of the Lower Rio Grande resaca thickets, and a brilliant yellow prothonotary warbler normally found in the riverbottom swamps of the deep south.
I am not the first Midlander to write about caliche pits. JoAnn Merritt wrote a story about a caliche pit for the Phalarope, the newsletter of the Midland Naturalists, that the Purple Martin Association newsletter reprinted. One of her sons has a mother-in-law who lives in Illinois, who, surprised to see JoAnn's name, said she "about dropped her eyeteeth."
From where did that term originate? I love such catchy folksy sayings! Reader Louise Baxter recently sent me a letter about the term barditch I used in a recent column on sandstorms, commenting on how it is a "bowdlerization" of the term borrowditch, where dirt for a road is borrowed from ditches on either side. Ms. Baxter believes barditch is an endemic West Texas term. Caliche pits are another such term. Other places call such pits of roadbuilding material by the name "quarry." Out here on the Llano Estacado, that term is reserved for places where rock for construction is dug out of the ground.
From the late 1800s until the 1930s over at Barstow red sandstone for buildings as far away as Dallas was mined at the Quito Quarry. Midland's second courthouse was of that rock, and just north of downtown are two old buildings made from that old courthouse. Judge Hyde, when he gives his wonderful powerpoint presentation on Midland history, has mentioned that it would be a great idea to build a monument on the courthouse grounds out of that rock.
Down at Garden City is a limestone quarry that supplies rock full of fossils for not only building construction, but also for unusual coffee tables, flagstone patios and other home improvement uses. "Texas Hill Country style" architecture that features rock has become a new trend in commercial and residential construction now seen not only in Midland but also across most of the state. Over at El Paso, many homes and fences are built of rock from the neighboring Franklin Mountains. Rock adds a sense of permanence to not only houses, but also to landscaping - by the means of rock ledges, specimen rocks of great size, and rock fences. Do-it-yourselfers use rock from caliche pits for such projects after wrangling permission for access. When I look at some of my own construction with caliche pit rock, I remember all the flora and fauna I have seen at "the pits." Viva las caliche pits!
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