PRESIDIO — At last week’s meeting, the Presidio County Commissioners Court voted in favor of asking the state to transfer ownership of the international bridge to the county. Their vote is the latest episode in almost seven decades of trying to take control of the American side of the port of entry, which many see as a diamond in the rough. But like any contested treasure trove, control over the crossing has led to broken promises, numerous lawsuits and — in one particularly extreme instance — a murder.
Whether the county takes any lessons from its own past, there are few other case studies to look toward. The Presidio International Bridge is currently the only vehicle crossing in Texas owned by the state; all others are owned by their host county or city. It is also the smallest and least profitable, but its unique position near the booming Permian Basin makes it an attractive potential investment.
Throughout his two budget cycles in office, Presidio County Judge Joe Portillo has been explicit about the state of the county’s finances after running deficits — inherited, in part, from his predecessor — that threaten critical services like roads and access to the courthouse in Marfa and its annex in Presidio. “There’s no cherry on the ice cream,” he said. “In fact, there is no ice cream.”
Portillo sees the bridge as a major opportunity and a chance to put Presidio County on the map. The bridge currently doesn’t have the capacity for 24/7 cargo crossings; slow demand has made U.S. Customs hesitant to hire inspectors that could grow the port’s capacity to handle agricultural goods.
In the long term, Portillo hopes that boosting business on the border will create jobs and boost the real estate market. Slow tax roll growth — a fraction of a fraction of a percent annually — means that the county’s profits aren’t keeping pace with inflation. Besides property taxes, the county has no money-making enterprise except for the Presidio County Jail, which provides a small, unreliable income from hosting federal prisoners.
H. Cowan of Solitaire Homes raised several concerns about the county’s true motives in seeking control of the bridge, which he thought could quickly become a money pit instead of a source of profit. “No way in heck should the state give up that bridge,” he said. “What you’re really talking about is you have a budget shortfall in the county, and you’re looking for something to fill that hole.”
Nearly all conversations about the bridge have included charging tolls on the American side to make the enterprise self-sufficient. Mexico currently charges 30 pesos, or about $1.50, to cross; the American side does not charge a toll.
Most of Cowan’s employees live and work in Ojinaga, but a small handful commute from Ojinaga to Presidio every day. He said they were a textbook example of daily bridge commuters who would be unfairly impacted by the change, many of whom are working-class folks who live on the Mexican side of the border to cut costs.
Perhaps Cowan was right to bring up the issue — given that literal blood has been shed in Presidio over bridge tolls in years past.
The ballad of H.E. Dupuy
Over a hundred years ago, before there was a vehicle crossing between Presidio and Ojinaga, there was a rancher who operated a ferry as a side hustle. E.A. “Dogie” Wright, one of the first Border Patrol Inspectors in the Big Bend, once told an interviewer that the ferry had to get creative as more cars hit the road — he remembered watching the anonymous rancher lash together two rowboats to take a Dodge touring car across the river.
That arrangement didn’t last long. The vehicle crossing between Presidio and Ojinaga dates back to 1926, when Congress approved its construction and the operation of a port of entry open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. for vehicle traffic and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for “merchandise.” Businessmen H.E. Dupuy and T.B. Anderson split the construction tab, which was $35,000 (around $623,000 in today’s money.)
Dupuy later took over his business partner’s interests and became sole owner of the bridge, which he operated remotely from El Paso, for the most part. Folks in Presidio were not pleased with Dupuy’s absentee leadership, particularly his collecting of tolls, “which irked people,” in the words of former Border Patrol Inspector Owen Oates.
Oates claimed to be a witness to the aftermath of a particularly dark event in Presidio’s history — one that was extensively covered by The Big Bend Sentinel.
Dupuy’s sole employee was a teenager relegated to “a little hut” on the U.S. side of the bridge, where he collected tolls from people using the bridge in either direction. In an investigation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, federal officials “expressed amazement” at the hefty tolls. “Dupuy appeared to be avaricious — not an attractive trait,” Oates recalled.
The word “irked” became a buzzword in The Sentinel in 1959, when tempers flared over the bridge during a particularly slow season for business, which some people blamed on the tolls. “A light drizzle fell on Presidio Wednesday evening, hardly enough to wet the ground, but it did cool the temperature somewhat even though tempers are still red hot in the valley town,” Jim O’Brien reported on August 27 of that year. “Townspeople are especially irked with bridge-owner H.E. Dupuy, who still has not handed his proposal for settlement to the Mexican government.”
That week, Mexican police issued a warrant for Dupuy’s arrest, demanding their fair share of bridge tolls collected over the course of three decades. Dupuy had also been charged with revoking free passes for certain locals and for charging higher rates to Mexican nationals crossing the bridge, hiking the fee from 16 to 65 cents over the summer of that year in retaliation.
Representatives from Ojinaga wanted to make it clear that their demands did not signal anti-American sentiment — they offered the equivalent of $120,000 in pesos to anyone who would help start construction on a new bridge. “All this has given the people of the area new hope and a desire to band together and fight back at the bridge owner who is bringing the wrath of these people down on his head,” O’Brien wrote.
The Presidio County Commissioners Court was hoping to work around Dupuy, gathering interested business boosters to collaborate with the Mexican government. They felt that the issue was popular enough that they could hold a bond election and voters would be willing to make an investment.
Dupuy and his lawyer, Ray Pearson, warned that taking over the bridge business wouldn’t be a panacea to the county’s chronic problems, even if folks outside the political realm supported it. “It’s no gold mine,” Pearson said. “I can say that fees collected would not support a man and his family in luxuries.”
Precinct 3 Commissioner Dr. Clyde Vaught was under fire from his constituents, most of whom wanted Dupuy ousted. By most accounts, Vaught was a well-liked, hard-working physician who served the poor communities along the border with the help of his wife, Filomena. (One of Vaught’s claims to fame was delivering a baby in Ruidosa, a baby in Presidio, and a baby in Redford on the same day.)
A less-gentle side of Dr. Vaught surfaced on the night of October 2, 1959, when shots rang out in Presidio — leaving Dupuy slumped over dead in the front seat of his car.
Vaught told The Sentinel that he left home to pay a house call to a patient. When he stepped out of his car, he saw a blue vehicle following him. Dupuy was behind the wheel, shouting something he couldn’t make out.
Vaught claimed that Dupuy had been acting strangely in the weeks leading up to the shooting, wearing a long wool trench coat around town in the late-August heat. “I couldn’t tell if he had a gun hid under that coat or not,” he said.
Being unable to see his foe’s hands, Vaught “couldn’t take a chance” and shot the businessman through the jaw. He said he was on edge after weeks of stalking and harassment from Dupuy and his lawyer, who allegedly called him to say he was on his way to Presidio “to finish [him].”
A grand jury indicted Vaught on murder charges a month later. But Dupuy was so widely disliked that the shooting didn’t seem to harm Vaught’s reputation too much — in December of that year, he filed for a chance at reelection to his seat on the commissioners court. “It was, some say, a tragedy of comic proportions — or vice versa,” wrote Patrol Inspector Oates.
Dupuy Jr. takes over the booth
The courts ultimately decided that Vaught acted in self-defense, but the process drained him financially and he moved away to seek more lucrative opportunities. Dupuy’s son Frank took over operations on the bridge, slashing toll rates as a gesture of goodwill.
But the conciliatory spirit didn’t last long. Perhaps in retaliation for his father’s death, the younger Dupuy fought the county’s effort to build a new bridge tooth and nail in a nasty decade-plus legal fight that stopped just short of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Then — as now — folks were frustrated with the speed at which the privately-owned bridge was repaired and expanded. Dupuy filed for two separate federal permits for bridge construction but never actually began the project. Many considered the bridge dilapidated beyond repair. (He insisted it was “as safe as any.”)
Meanwhile, Presidio County was trying to take control of Dupuy’s bridge and eventually build a new one, the cost of construction offset by toll revenue. “Maybe the application is a delaying action in an effort to keep Presidio County from getting a new bridge,” The Sentinel editor Pat Ryan mused in a column on May 31, 1973. “Don’t really know, but after two previous applications were made and no work was done, how can we depend on any work being done on the reconstruction of the bridge now?”
Mexico once again expressed support for Presidio County’s bridge in March 1976, when about 300 folks from Ojinaga staged a protest that halted traffic. Then-Mayor Ernesto Poblano gave a statement: “This is a peaceful expression of the people of Ojinaga to let the people in Washington know we are as interested in the new bridge as the people of Presidio County,” he said. “We are also protesting the high tolls and arbitrary tolls that have been and are being charged by Dupuy.”
On July 2, 1976, Presidio County was granted a permit to construct a new international bridge, and continued efforts to try to buy the bridge from Dupuy. Like his father before him, Dupuy said he didn’t understand the county’s rush to take control of the bridge, given how little revenue it generated — especially given the new bridge’s $1.75 million price tag. “If it were [profitable], I’d be down in the Bahamas fishing or in Hawaii, living in one of those condominiums,” he told the Fort Stockton Pioneer.
In 1982, a federal permit for construction of the new bridge was altered to put the state of Texas in charge. “Originally, Presidio County had intended to build and pay for the bridge itself, using toll revenues,” then-Presidio County Judge Charlie Henderson told The Sentinel. “However, the plan was financially unworkable.” (He did not elaborate further but had been on a long and frustrating quest for funding from Washington.)
Meanwhile, at the old bridge, Dupuy had a change of heart and gave permission to the City of Presidio to collect tolls — for the first three years of its incorporation, it was the infant city’s largest source of income. But he withdrew that permission in 1984, upset that city officials had not fought the new bridge and simultaneously filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the county’s commencement of bridge construction.
Dupuy was legally unsuccessful, and the family’s name slowly faded from the headlines after being a reliable source of irksome news. The bridge was quietly sold to a man named Bob Burns from Michigan, who paid $21,396 for the ruins and 1.38 acres of land.
The Sentinel called him at his home on the Upper Peninsula and asked what he was going to do with the property. “I have several different plans … ideas,” he said.
A drop in the bucket
Whatever Burns’ plans were, they never came to fruition. The new bridge opened for business in 1986 and has operated mostly the same ever since — the United States and Mexico split the bill for construction, and users only pay a toll to cross from Mexico back into the United States.
The county has asked the Legislature numerous times for the ability to charge a toll since the ribbon was cut 38 years ago.
In 2005, then-State Representative Pete Gallego filed a bill championed by city and county representatives that sought to transfer ownership of the bridge from the state to the county. Gallego “didn’t expect to encounter significant resistance” from the Legislature but did note that it would be a long process, since permission would ultimately need to come from Washington.
Local leaders circled the wagons, forming a four-member board called the Presidio International Port of Entry (PIPE) to guide administration of the bridge. The bill would need to pass the Legislature before the transfer could travel up the pipeline to the federal State Department, which could alter the permits for the bridge to give construction and tolling authority to the county.
Gallego and the PIPE board hoped to charge $1.50 for tolls, generating about $1.4 million in revenue each year. (The bill passed the Senate but not the House.)
Last year, County Judge Joe Portillo took a similar bill to the Legislature that took the plan a step further and would make the Presidio International Port Authority — something like the grandnephew of 2005’s PIPE — a taxing entity, like the Presidio County Underground Water Conservation District or the Big Bend Regional Hospital District. (In a reversal of fortunes, this bill passed the House but not the Senate.)
At Wednesday’s meeting, County Attorney-elect Blair Park took a moment to address concerns about tolls on the bridge. She pointed out that these conversations have always been paired with ideas about how to offset the financial burden for the locals who cross the bridge the most — whether through discounts or through a toll tag like those used in sprawling urban areas.
She thought that the tolls were a small price to pay — literally — for a revitalized bridge. “Our bridge is the poorest and least built-up of any of the ports, and there’s a reason for that,” she said. “The state doesn’t have a very active ownership of the bridge down here because they don’t want to, and that’s fine. But when cities or counties own it, they do what it takes to make the bridge successful.”
Precinct 4 Commissioner David Beebe has long been a supporter of the bridge, despite frequent public admissions that the bridge doesn’t directly benefit his Marfa constituents in any way except more traffic at the four-way stop. He doesn’t see the bridge as a cash grab, but instead a way to bolster the county’s economy in a way that will eventually benefit everyone. “It’s a drop in the bucket, but we need more drops,” he said.