Part Texas. Part Brooklyn. Part Mars.

Fifty miles from the Mexican border and 200 miles from the nearest major airport, Marfa is a dusty dot of a town with one traffic light and fewer than 2,000 people in the remote reaches of far West Texas known as ‘El Despoblado’ (the uninhabited). Beyond the town’s steel water tower, the Chihuahuan Desert unfurls towards the horizon in an endless expanse of cactus scrubs, scorched prairie and tangled tumbleweeds amid one of the US’ last frontiers.

Since the 1970s, a wave of hipsters, artists and urban transplants have blown in with the winds and turned this unassuming ranching town into an unlikely avant-garde mecca. Today, Marfa is a quirky collision of saloons and espresso bars, 10-gallon hats and berets and feed stores and vegan restaurants.

But long before Marfa began attracting the unconventional, people were coming to witness the inexplicable. For more than 135 years, mysterious glowing orbs have appeared here in the night sky. Known as the Marfa Lights, these otherworldly wonders remain one of the most unexplained mysteries in the United States.