Van Horn, Texas, celebrates rocket man Bezos and is happy to see him lift up the town’s economy

VAN HORN, Texas — Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, and three other companions, including his brother, are set to make history Tuesday, rocketing off to the edge of space from a spot in a vast barren desert in far West Texas.

If all goes to plan — and the weather during an already unpredictable monsoon season cooperates — New Shepherd, Blue Origin’s pilotless spacecraft, will blast off at 8 a.m. central daylight time from Launch Site One, some 24 miles north of Van Horn in Culberson County. Making history from the unlikely town of Van Horn, a largely Hispanic town near the U.S.-Mexico border, will be Bezos and his brother Mark, alongside Oliver Daemen, 18, who is set to become the youngest person in space, and Wally Funk, 82, who would become the oldest.

While the flight will only last minutes, locals here hope the aftermath will extend far into the future. Some wax poetically about what the launch will mean for this town of less than 2,000 long after the buzz settles down.

“I imagine a better, brighter future for our town,” said Amy Morales, assistant manager of Hotel Capitan, which like all 18 other hotels and motels, is booked solid with world travelers. “This may be the beginning of something better.”

Van Horn has long been a place to pass through on the way to somewhere else. U.S. Highway 90, 54 and Interstate 10 pass through it, with Interstate 20 converging from the east. This is historic cattle country, filled with old cowboys riding in pickups — and even some herding sheep from horseback. Northeast and east is New Mexico and the heart of Texas oil and gas country in Midland and Odessa. But out in the desert between the Delaware Mountains and the Sierra Diablo, motorists can get a glimpse of what some see as a key to future economic growth for the region.

“Blue Origin didn’t hire a lot of my local astronauts here but they hired a lot of my good contractors,” quipped Culberson County Sheriff Oscar Carrillo, as he recently drove toward Blue Origin, past the Longfellow Ranch that serves as temporary housing for some employees. “The old school rancher and the farmer and now we’ve got oil and gas and now we’ve got the spaceport. It’s an interesting combination of people. … You can walk around Van Horn and you may run into a Border Patrol agent, a truck driver, a tourist, a traveler, a smuggler, or an astronaut.”

Carrillo points to the traffic flowing on the highway, past ocotillos dotting mountains on Highway 54. Off in the distance is a white structure of some sort, plus mountains, lots of scrub brush and vast desert land. This is Blue Origin’s home. The entrance has a fresh sign that reads: “Blue Origin: Launch Site One,” and a trademark feather, which is on display in many businesses in the town as a sign of support for the company.

He points toward the Guadalupe Mountains in the far background,

“Pretty remote area, isn’t it?” Carrillo said. “I think that’s why they selected the area that they are operating from, so they can work on their experiment with a lot of privacy.”

In Van Horn, on most nights, the Cactus Cantina Grill and Pizzeria is buzzing with a myriad of odd characters, which includes what locals call the “Sheldons,” a reference to the fictional character in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Except here they’re Blue Origin’s scientists and tech employees, grabbing a drink alongside locals in a cantina scene straight out of Star Wars.

“Yep, that sounds about right,” said Gilda Morales, who co-owns the bar.

Like many here, she wears many hats. She’s the editor of The Van Horn Advocate, a nurse practitioner and a county commissioner in the area where Blue Origin operates.

“I think we have to pinch ourselves because you see it on TV and then you walk outside and say, ‘Hey that’s happening right here’ in Van Horn,” she said.

Van Horn needs good headlines and newcomers. The town population is in decline, having lost hundreds of people in the last census. It’s a story that Gilda Morales knows all too well. She, too, left Van Horn for jobs and an education hundreds of miles away. Her last stop was Dallas, which she left in 2007 to return home to take care of her parents. These days, Gilda Morales is fixated on Blue Origin and what it may mean for generations of locals in the years to come.

She said Blue Origin, which has quietly operated in this remote area of West Texas since 2000, is “encouraging its employees to blend in and become members of the community.”

A Blue Origin spokeswoman said the company now has about 275 employees in West Texas, though it didn’t say how many are Van Horn residents. There are also an additional 50 contractors on site providing support services ranging from catering to maintenance.

While happy for the extra customers, Gilda Morales hopes space tourism can build a future in her hometown.

“If there are good paying jobs, maybe with Blue Origin, why not here?” she asked. “Why leave for bigger towns?”

Blue Origin’s ripple effects are already felt 120 miles west of Van Horn — in El Paso, a city that, along with Van Horn, has long been in the news because of immigration and the border, including the wall between the city and its sibling in Mexico, Ciudad Juárez. Thanks to Blue Origin — and also Virgin Galactic, down the road from El Paso — the region has been humming with news about space and hopping with economic activity.

Dr. Heather Wilson, president of the University of Texas at El Paso, is an ardent supporter of the space program. Wilson, the former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, also sits on Blue Origin’s board of advisors. She estimates three-quarters of the engineers at the Blue Origin in Van Horn are UTEP graduates, though it’s unclear how many engineers are working at Launch One.

“We have a very strong aerospace program now, and I hope these most recent activities will inspire more young people to choose to come to UTEP and study engineering,” she added. “We were just approved to offer a [Bachelor of Science degree] in Aerospace and Aeronautical Engineering. We do a significant amount of research for NASA, we build and control satellites and design and test rocket engines, and we hope to do more. It’s really an exciting time for the region and for our students.”

Back in Van Horn, no one remembers — or doesn’t want to say — whether they’ve ever seen Bezos in town. Many locals have signed non-disclosure agreements. For now, locals have to settle for a glimpse of Bezos on a freshly painted mural off Van Horn’s main street, Broadway.

And that’s too bad, said Gilda Morales.

“We’d like to get to know him,” she said. “I’m sure he’s a very nice guy, but we don’t see much of him. And I guess that goes with the territory of being a billionaire. People hitting him up.”

“Believe me, if he showed up here, we wouldn’t come up and say, ‘Hey, I’m your long, lost cousin, can I borrow a couple of million?’ We just want to get to know him. Maybe he could look around and see what the needs in Van Horn are and maybe throw a bone here or there. That would be nice. … But we just want him to get to know us because I think he would like us. He would like Van Horn.”