Chili cook-off and resort host spurred Terlingua tourism
It is with a heavy heart that the family of Glen Allen Pepper announces his passing on April 5 in San Antonio, Texas, following a long illness.
Known to all as simply “Pepper,” he was born February 22, 1940, to Claude Allen “C.A” Pepper Jr., and Katherine Louise “Katie Lou” Feldtman, in San Antonio. C.A. and Katie Lou owned and operated a farm in Sabinal, Texas, and raised Pepper and his sisters, Peggy Pepper, Patricia Havel, and Karen Phillips (Jimmy Phillips).
Working the farm alongside his family, Pepper learned to love the land and learned the value of productive work and service. While learning to be a steward of the land he also learned to love the air and joined the Air Force Reserves, serving in the 433rd Airlift Wing based in San Antonio, also known as the “Alamo Wing.” His love of the air rivaled his love of the land, and Pepper later owned and flew his own airplanes.
Pepper married Donna Davenport Thrift in 1968 and they raised three children, David Thrift, Melissa Pepper and Marcus Pepper. The family grew to include granddaughter Hannah Pepper; nieces Glenda Hubble, Kim Havel, Kate Havel; and nephews Allen Phillips and Barrett Phillips. Pepper was predeceased by his parents, C.A. and Katie Lou, and his sister, Peggy Lee Pepper.
Pepper was born with an active imagination and an unwavering independence that carried him through the 86 years of his incredible life. At the age of 27, he took the opportunity to purchase an abandoned mercury mine in Terlingua, Texas. He went to work repurposing the rock cottages and main headquarters for the mine, turning it into the first and only tourist destination at that time in the heart of the Chihuahuan Desert. Renaming it as the “Villa de la Mina,” it operated as a magnet that brought tourists and characters from all walks of life into the beautiful desert he so loved. Musicians like Bill Smallwood, Allen Damron, Kent Finley and a slew of other names you would recognize, along with retired nuclear physicists, storytellers, detectives, film makers––you name it, they came. Pepper had a way of collecting people who became as close as family and as open as the desert itself. Never one to see the problem but only a solution, Pepper found all kinds of ways to support his family and friends there in this desert paradise. He ran goat herds, gathered and sold candelilla wax and ran the first commercial river raft trips down the Rio Grande.
For more than a decade, beginning in 1976, Pepper and the Villa hosted C.A.S.I.’s annual Arriba Terlingua Chili Cook-off, which now has become legendary. He held dirt bike and motorcycle races. Pepper was, in short, the first modern pioneer of the Big Bend to offer tourism as a viable escape to adventure and fun. Today Terlingua and “South County” thrive in large part because of his early initiatives.
A graveside service to celebrate Pepper’s life is planned for Saturday, April 18, at 10 a.m. at the Sabinal Cemetery, with a luncheon to follow at Hermann Sons Steak House in Hondo, Texas.In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research. Arrangements by Guinn-Horger Funeral Home of Hondo, 2006 Ave. M, Hondo, Texas 78861. To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store at sympathy.legacy.com.