VAN HORN, Texas — For years, the official letterhead for the small town of Van Horn, tucked neatly among the foothills of the Guadalupe Mountains, read simply: “Farming, ranching, mining.”

And while there is still some farming and ranching in this far West Texas community, and a talc mine still operates near the edge of town, there’s another booming business in its midst: space tourism.

The sprawling spaceport of Blue Origin, the company founded by business magnate Jeff Bezos in 2000, is located about 25 miles outside of the town of about 1,800 residents on what was once desolate desert ranchland.

On Tuesday, the company launched four people on a 10-minute trip into space: Bezos, his brother, Mark, female aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutchman and last-minute fill-in for the winner of a $28 million charity auction who had a scheduling conflict. Funk, at age 82, and Daemen became the oldest and youngest people in space.

“That’s the big buzz in this little town,” said Valentina Muro as she rang up a customer at the Broadway Cafe along Van Horn’s main strip. “It’s kind of put Van Horn on the map a little more than it was.”

The town’s proximity to Big Bend National Park, the Guadalupe Mountains, an ancient barrier reef that includes the four highest peaks in Texas, and New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns also makes it an ideal pit stop for tourists.

As for the impact that Blue Origin’s operations have had on the town, the reaction among locals is mixed. While employees and contractors have been working at the facility since about 2005, Brewster said it’s just been in the last five years or so that workers for Blue Origin have started integrating themselves into the community.

“When they were in the development stages, Blue Origin was so secretive about what was going on, their people couldn’t really socialize because they couldn’t talk about their work and things like that,” Van Horn Mayor Becky Brewster said. “And it was like, here are the Blue Origin people and here are the Van Horn people. But that’s starting to change for the better.”

One of the roadblocks to connecting locals and the scientists and engineers who work at Blue Origin is one that plagues many rural communities — a lack of available housing. Of the roughly 250 employees and contractors that work at the facility, Brewster said only 40% live in Van Horn.

Linda McDonald, a longtime resident, said that while she’s amazed at the prospect of people being launched into space from practically her back yard, she bristles at the suggestion that Blue Origin put Van Horn on the map.

“We are already on the map,” she told a group of about 100 graduates of Van Horn High School during a recent pep rally and reunion that was part of the town’s jubilee. “You have helped put us on the map, and we should be proud of that.”