Langtry was established in the 1880s when the Southern Pacific and the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio railroads were joined at nearby Dead Man's Gulch. At the time, the only settlement in the area was a tent city named Vinegaroon with a reputation for extreme lawlessness. The railroad and the Texas Rangers commissioned Vinegaroon store owner Roy Bean to serve as justice of the peace at a new townsite next to the rail line. Judge Roy Bean christened the town Langtry after his idol Lillie Langtry, a famous English actress of the period, and opened a saloon called the Jersey Lily (her international title which a sign painter misspelled as "Lilly") that also served as his courtroom. With a volume of the 1879 Revised Statues of Texas and a six-shooter, the judge declared himself the "law west of the Pecos," often fining defendants by ordering a round of drinks for the house. In 1896, Bean defied Texas and Mexico law by staging the Maher-Fitzsimmons championship prizefight on a sandbar in the middle of the Rio Grande (at the time, professional boxing was illegal on both sides of the river). Bean died in 1904.
Judge Roy Bean Visitor Center is one of the State Highway's tourist bureaus and distributes information on travel throughout the state. Behind the center is the restored Jersey Lilly saloon, which is open to touring (free). Next tot he center is a nature trail through a well-planned Chihuahuan Desert garden in which the plants are labeled with their scientific names and the medicinal and utilitarian uses of each.