Do Roses Bloom in
Wild Rose Pass?
Photo credit: Jeff Keeling
Wild Rose Pass along Hwy. 17, between Ft. Davis and Balmorhea
by Phyllis Dunham
T
here are places that
haunt us, for better or
worse. Wild Rose Pass is
like that for me.
I first saw it in 1986 while
travelling with the man I would
soon marry, and I was in love.
Driving from Balmorhea to Fort
Davis on Highway 17, we came
around the bend through this
furrow in the mountains and
were astonished by the sight of a
profusion of pink flowers waving
in the wind. We stopped. We
took pictures. We didn’t have the
nerve to go through the fence,
but we recognized them as roses
– small, bright pink roses with
five simple petals fluttering along
thorny canes draping the hill-
sides. We stood there for a while,
rocked by the wind, our arms
around each other, gazing upon
this flourish of nature.
At least that’s how I remem-
ber it. I also remember that we
4
wondered what the name of this
magnificent place was until we
came across the metal plaque
mounted on its granite stand at
the south end of the pass. It said:
In early days the Indian Trail
through these mountains followed the
gorge below known as Limpia Canyon.
To avoid the floods travelers over the
San Antonio – El Paso road, emi-
grants, U.S. troops and supply trains,
and the mail chose this higher pass
named for its wild roses.
At the top of the plaque, just
below the embossed Texas star,
were the words WILD ROSE
PASS.
Some dozen years later, on a
trip with our children, we
returned to Fort Davis. Each of
us had something special we
wanted to do. For Sam, the
youngest, it was a star party at
the McDonald Observatory. For
Miguel, the oldest, it was a day
at the Fort Davis Historic Site.
And for Dee, it was getting up at
dark-thirty on a frigid morning
so that we could park our
behinds on the bone-chilling
trunk of our car to watch prong-
horns through binoculars. But
for me, a big part of this trip was
about those roses.
It was early spring, so I didn’t
think the roses in the pass would
be in bloom yet, but I asked the
irascible proprietor of our motel
about them. “Ain’t been any
roses in the pass for years,” he
said, “Prob’ly never was.” We
drove to the pass anyway, but
from the highway, we could see
no evidence of blooms or even
of bare rose canes. Still, we told
the boys about the time that we
drove through the pass and saw
the roses and how beautiful it
was and how happy we were.
They were not impressed.
“Where do you think they
went?” Sam asked. I was
Cenizo
First Quarter 2013
stumped for an answer.
In the years after that first
sighting, I had become a bit of
an aficionado of antique roses,
filling our rock garden back in
Austin with specimens of wild or
naturalized roses started from
cuttings I had rustled from road-
sides and old cemeteries and at
abandoned farm houses. I
became adept at propagating
wild roses from six-inch cuttings,
nurturing them to fruition, mak-
ing more cuttings, and sharing
them. Still, I always wondered
about that little pink rose I had
once seen blooming in West
Texas. What was its name?
Might I be able to take cuttings
and propagate that little rose?
And I often thought, “If I ever
get back to Wild Rose Pass …”
The spring of 2007, the year
I moved to Alpine, was quite
mild until Easter Sunday. That
morning I awoke to a freeze and
a strangely lifting fog. I had an
idea. I called my mother and
asked her to go with me to Wild
Rose Pass. Knowing that the
light was quite unusual and
might be good for her photogra-
phy, I tempted her. “Bring your
camera, Mom. We can’t do any-
thing else today. We may as well
go for a drive and take pictures.”
Along the way, we saw odd
sights: fog streaming down the
steep slopes of Mitre Peak, and
more fog flowing along the con-
tours of the rolling waters in
Limpia Creek. By the time we
made it to the pass, we had just
about ooohed and aaahed our-
selves out. Once there, our light-
hearted mood suddenly shifted.
The pass was enshrouded in that
strange lifting fog, and the effect
was spectacularly eerie. Fingers
continued on page 27