AYN FOUNDATION
(DAS MAXIMUM)
ANDY WARHOL
“And some rin up hill and down dale,
knapping the chucky stanes to pieces with hammers,
like sae many road makers run daft.
They say it is to see how the world was made.”
– Sir Walter Scott, St. Ronan’s Well, 1824
MARIA ZERRES
THE LAST SUPPER
SEPTEMBER ELEVEN
Brite Building, 107-109 N Highland, Marfa
Open weekends noon to 5pm or by appointment.
Please call 432.729.3315 for more information.
Green Works
ARCHITECTURAL AND CONSTRUCTION PHASE SERVICES
Adobe Restoration
Sustainable Architectural Design
Rainwater Catchment Design
Handicapped Accessible Design
Solar/Wind Energy Consulting
Photo courtesy Martha MacLeod
Mike Green, AIA, Texas License #10917
LEED Accredited Professional
646-256-8112
mike@greenworks-architecture.com
Box 97, Marfa, TX 79843
On Bill MacLeod
by Jean Hardy Pittman
B
a facility of the
Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute
Est. 1974
botanical gardens
open
year-round!
cactus & succulent greenhouse
hiking trails
located on ST HWY 118
outdoor & indoor exhibits 4 mi. S. of Fort Davis
nature shop closed major holidays
workshops & programs Open 9-5, Mon.-Sat.
citizen science opportunities www.cdri.org
school & tour groups welcome 432-364-2499
8
ill MacLeod first showed up at Front
Street Books in 1998, not long after he
and his wife, Martha, moved to Alpine
from Houston. Bill would buy the local newspa-
pers every Thursday, chat about the news and fre-
quently ask me, “Well, how are things, Mrs.
Hardy?” And if he didn’t get a satisfactory
response, he would press, “Well, and how are
things?”
I learned he was teaching computer courses at
the university part-time, that he was semi-retired
and had been a business professional in Houston.
Later, when he began asking if there was any
market for a guidebook on the geology of the Big
Bend, I perked up. That’s when I learned he was
a bona fide geologist, too. This man has some-
thing up his sleeve, I thought.
Indeed. Between 2003 and August 2010,
MacLeod personally wrote, edited, published, dis-
tributed and promoted five books – two were
expanded revisions of earlier works – on the geol-
ogy of the Big Bend area. He also he wrote a
guidebook on Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas
Panhandle.
William MacLeod was born July 5, 1938, at
Strathnaver, in the sparsely populated northern
reaches of Scotland. His parents, Daisy and
Donald MacLeod, were crofters, raising sheep on
a small farm. The boy did well in school and went
to Aberdeen University to study geology, graduat-
Cenizo
First Quarter 2011
ing in 1960.
MacLeod’s first job took him to the newly
independent state of Nigeria, where he worked in
the oil and gas fields. During a vacation to
Amsterdam, he met a young American woman,
Val Pierpont, who became his wife.
After the couple wed in 1963, they returned to
Nigeria. They lived there until the bloody
Nigerian Civil War broke out. They fled the vio-
lence with their by-then two young children in
1966, Bill taking a job as a mining engineer near
Johannesburg, South Africa, at the world’s largest
platinum-mining complex. But political unrest
during South African anti-apartheid struggles
caused them to return to the United States in
1969.
They settled in Boston, and Bill made a sharp
career turn by taking a job as a computer pro-
grammer. The Scotsman soon sought and
obtained American citizenship. In 1974, he
applied to Harvard University and earned his
MBA degree in 1976.
At 38, with his geology and fresh business cre-
dentials, MacLeod eyed Houston, where he went
to work for several oil-related firms. In 1980 or so,
he created his own business called Rosail
Minerals (Rosail is a Scottish place name),
importing and exporting minerals such as gyp-
sum for large companies.
In 1986, Bill and Val’s marriage ended in
divorce. Some time later, Bill met Martha Klein
through mutual friends. They married in 1992
and remained in Houston until 1998, when Bill
retired. Tired of big city life, they moved to Alpine
and into the heart of a geological wonderland.
Not one to be idle, Bill took the teaching job at
Sul Ross and found a renewed interest in geology,
and Martha, formerly a reading tutor, started
graduate study at Sul Ross to become a certified
speech therapist.
The same day Bill and Martha came to town, a
young geologist named Blaine Hall arrived too.
The two men also started teaching at Sul Ross on
the same day, and they hit it off from the beginning.
Bill discovered that Hall knew the geology
behind the scenery of Big Bend and was willing
to share his knowledge. “Bill had not used his
geology for some time, but he was a really good
geologist,” said Hall. “He and I went all over the
area, and I showed him my favorite places and
taught him what I knew.”
It was not long before MacLeod’s vision of
geology guidebooks for the general public began
to take shape. He studied every relevant geologi-
cal paper he could get his hands on, Hall said.
“He mastered the material.”
Blaine Hall became a steady sounding board for
Bill throughout the course of the next decade. He
was closely involved in the research for Bill’s first
book, Big Bend Vistas, which ultimately covered the
features along the major highways of the Big Bend
area. MacLeod began the road log 22 miles south
of Fort Stockton on Hwy. 385, at the Sierra
Madera mountain range. This is where a traveler
from the east, dropping down from Interstate 10,
would first see a genuine mountain up close.