The wind blows from two directions to the Los Vientos Wind Farm, Texas’ largest and the nation’s second largest, with 426 turbines towering over Willacy and Starr counties in the Rio Grande Valley.
In one direction, the wind sweeps from the wintry north through the South Texas plains. In another, it rolls from the southeast over the chilly blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico, before meeting the warm Texas coast. These temperature differences produce gusts that blow inland at an average of 11 miles per hour, across the seashore saltgrass, across the sorghum and cotton fields, and across the farm-to-market roads, shaking cars, lashing palm trees, and whistling in the ears of those who live and work in the tiny town of Lyford, which sits in the Willacy County section of Los Vientos.
Here is where the nomadic Coahuiltecan Indians once roamed against the winds. Where the winds once caused ships of a scattered Spanish armada to wreck off the coast on Padre Island. Where Spanish colonists once named the area after the lake they called Laguna Del Como Se Llama, or “What’s-It-Called Lake.” Where two different railroad lines once brought white farmers from the Midwest, who settled the town and segregated Mexican-American families. Where each of the town’s three cotton gins once employed over 100 workers. Where the Lyford town center once had a hotel, a bank, a theater, several drug stores, and the county once had a hospital. All this was before the 1990s, when farms began to shrink, jobs dwindled, and local youth looked elsewhere to chase their dreams.
