Every night, a blue neon Pegasus flickers on the hillside skyline at the edge of Big Bend, perched above volcanic desert. Below it lies Terlingua, a resettled ghost town of about 170 people living among the adobe ruins of mercury mines left behind when workers emptied out in the 1940s. It’s where they say outlaws go to roost. Tales of escape artists and runaways, some more myth than truth, trickle through the region.
Follow the Pegasus’ glow to the La Posada Milagro hotel and you might just encounter one of these mythic figures: Mimi Webb Miller, the former lover of a Mexican drug lord and inspiration for a storyline on Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico. Though some rumors make Miller out to be a fugitive taking refuge in the desert, the truth is much less criminal.
Today, Miller owns the Milagro, a six-room guesthouse reconstructed by hand from the mining ruins, with ocotillo-stalk ceilings and walls of piled rock gathered directly from the hillside. Just down the hill, you can order the breakfast burrito at her cafe, Espresso y Poco Más, which has been Terlingua’s morning gathering place for more than 20 years. There, staff pours Marfa-roasted coffee and offers midday options like tamales, eggs Benedict, and Reuben sandwiches. A short walk away, Miller’s restaurant, Taquería El Milagro, serves plates and street tacos in the evenings.
But parked in front of a house nearby sits an artifact from Miller’s past life: a red Checker cab she used to drive across the Rio Grande. Miller’s love affair with Big Bend began in 1976, on a trip with future governor Ann Richards. Miller grew up as a debutante in the suburbs of Wichita Falls and as the niece of U.S. Sen. John Tower. At the time, she was working in Houston as a gallerist known for shows of monumental sculpture. “But when I came out here, I just fell in love with the country,” she says.
After that, she began monthly visits, traveling 12 hours each way between Houston and West Texas. Eventually, she stopped returning home. She cashed out her savings, sold her Mercedes, and bought the Checker cab because it could carry more gear. She’d make frequent trips by horseback across the border and bought a ranch across the river, which she named Rancho El Milagro.
Somewhere in that time, she met Pablo Acosta—a Mexican narcotics smuggler known as “The Ojinaga Fox.” “He was a very straightforward person,” Miller says. The two began a romantic relationship that ended when Acosta was killed in a 1987 shootout.
It was their story that Netflix used in the second season of Narcos: Mexico, dramatizing Miller’s early years in Terlingua. Recently, Abilene photographer Bill Wright wrote a new biography, Mimi: The Perilous Journey of a Free-Spirited Texas Woman. The author, whose book came out in March, first hired Miller over the telephone in 1982 to guide him across the river to a cockfight in San Carlos, Mexico. She arrived two hours late in worn boots and Levi’s, appearing to him like she had never lived anywhere but the border, he recalls. In the book’s foreword, historian Paul H. Carlson describes Miller as someone who “moves as easily among celebrities, politicians, and major American artists as she does with day laborers and cartel men.”
Miller isn’t tired of hearing any of it. “Now that I’m getting old, I relate to all those stories differently,” she says. “It just sort of happened. I didn’t expect it, and you get used to it.”
After Acosta’s death, Miller left for California. She spent the better part of four decades there casting commercials for Joe Pytka, the director behind the “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” public service announcement. Then, she would drive the whole way from Los Angeles, spend a week in Terlingua, and drive back. “I just feel really lucky,” she says. “I’ve had all these years since the ’70s out here.” She opened the guesthouse in 2005 and came home for good in 2023.
Most mornings, the travelers ordering coffee downhill have no idea whose counter they’re standing at. “People come in not knowing it’s owned by Mimi,” says Noemi Aviles, La Posada’s general manager. The ones who ask might get some of the stories from her and Aviles, and the rest circulate around town on their own. Either way—whether you know the famous Mimi tales or she’s simply the proprietor of the joint where you’ve enjoyed pulled pork tamales—Miller is forever woven into the tapestry of Terlingua.
