West Texans know it as one of the region's signature back-country experiences. Ranch Road 2810 – Pinto Canyon Road – crosses 60 miles of Presidio County, connecting Marfa with the Chinati Hot Springs and the riverside hamlet of Ruidosa. From winding blacktop to rutted dirt road, the journey showcases unbroken grasslands and forbidding mountains.

Much of Pinto Canyon itself is owned by Jeff Fort, retired CEO of security-systems company Tyco. Recently, Fort commissioned Alpine scholar David Keller to write a history of the canyon.

“In the Shadow of the Chinatis” will be published by Texas AandM Press in 2017. Keller has unearthed an overlooked past, in a rich portrait of a place....