It is with great sadness that I have to announce that Don Simmons passed away in January 2025. I am posting these images he had sent me as a remembrance. Rest in peace Don.

Mission Mary is a small and simple one-room chapel that sits alone on the West Texas high desert. It was once part of Calera, Texas, a small town that no longer exists.

The chapel was built by Mexican-American settlers at the beginning of the last century. Calera was a poor community of about one hundred people eking out a meager living, farming and ranching the high desert. When the spring that was their water source dried up in mid-century, the little town disappeared. The abandoned chapel was restored in the early 2000s and is open daily.