Songfacts®:

• Robert Earl Keen wrote this song about a visit to Boquillas del Carmen, a small Mexican village along the banks of the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park. In the late 1990s, Boquillas del Carmen was a small (300 resident) town with a bar, restaurant, taco stands, and children outside the mission selling rocks collected in the desert or from nearby caves.
  
  This unofficial border crossing in Big Bend was closed in 2002, which devastated the population in Boquillas del Carmen. It was reopened as an official port of entry in 2013.
• This song is known to be quite accurate; there was indeed a man who operated a rowboat across the river for tourists. Robert Earl Keen was known to frequently visit the village, and the small town has become somewhat of a legend in Texas.