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Big Bend National Park

Big rocks, little river

By Scott Richardson

March 13^th, 2020

Big Bend hasn’t always been on my list. To me it was just a tiny speck of green on a map, surrounded by a huge swath of west Texas desert. I wasn’t alone, last year it ranked 43rd in national parks visitation, while America’s most visited national park, Great Smoky Mountains, saw more than 12.5 million visitors in 2019. Meanwhile, Big Bend has welcomed only 17 million since 1944.

The pristine wilderness and wild river documented in Ben Master’s The River and the Wall caught my attention. Santa Elena Canyon’s towering walls drew me in.

I came to the park expecting solitude and the sparse desert landscape of the Chihuahuan desert. What I found was a park full of bio and new geologic surprises around every turn.

Big Bend National Park

Experience Big Bend

Experience Big Bend National Park just like we did. Explore the Chisos Mountains, Santa Elena Canyon, sights along the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, Boquillas Canyon, The Window and hike through Pine Canyon with us. Use your mouse or phone to rotate the frame, or use a VR headset to feel like you’re there.

Getting there

Big Bend isn’t near anything. The nearest city with any significant population and an airport is 200 miles away in Odessa. We chose El Paso based on its price and proximity to Guadalupe Mountains which I had explored earlier in the same trip.

The four-and-a-half hour drive to Big Bend is full of big sky and endless desert. A notable landmark only pops up every few hours: a travel plaza when you exit the interstate, the funky architecture of Marfa and the shops and hotels of Alpine. Once we entered Big Bend, the Chisos Mountains emerged out of the flat desert – a full mountain range completely enclosed in a national park sat soaking up the last of the day’s sun.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Chisos Mountains

Our first morning in the park, we woke up to an eerie fog billowing down the mountain peaks that towered 2,000 feet above our tent. The road into the Chisos Basin campground takes you on a winding adventure of ups and downs until you descend into camp at an elevation of 5400 ft. That morning, the fog, clouds and elevation gave us a chill and made us rethink spending a second night in the tent when temperatures were expected to reach 25°F.

The rust colored mountains provide a home for a wide variety of plant and animal life. The typical high desert vegetation turns into evergreens and provides a home to bears and mountain lions.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Santa Elena Canyon

One of our first stops was the short trail that leads into Santa Elena Canyon. The Rio Grande is narrow as it runs through the canyon, and it seems like Mexico is just a few feet away.

The layers of limestone extend 1500 feet above as the trails descends quickly towards the river. While the river has a visible current, it seems almost compared to the dramatic landscape of the walls above.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive

Ross Maxwell served as the first superintendent of Big Bend National Park when it was first established in the 1940s. With no paved roads, electricity or even a telephone, he helped make the park accessible so future generations could experience its splendor. One of his accomplishments was planning for a road that would highlight some of the park’s most impressive geologic features, and today it is named in his honor.

Our first stop was to the Castolon Historic District which once served as a small farming community within the Rio Grande delta. In May 2019 a wildland fire jumped the border from Mexico and rained embers onto the historic store and visitor’s center. The buildings quickly were set ablaze, and we found the ruins of the buildings surrounded by fences and signs warning of asbestos exposure. Luckily, many of the other historic buildings in the area were sparred thanks to quick action of local firefighters.

Up the road we hiked down into Tuff Canyon, a white canyon made up of compressed volcanic ash. We climbed over layers of rock and marveled at the bluebonnets that flourished in a hostile environment of sand and ash.

The arid environment surrounding the Chisos Mountains give way to a lush oasis at Sam Nail Ranch. An old windmill slowly pumps water to surrounding plants where birds take refuge.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Terlingua, TX

With temperatures dipping into the twenties, we sought out a motel for our second night near the park. We ended up in Terlingua on the park’s west side and took the recommendation to line up for dinner at the Starlight Theatre. We met two women from Dallas who were in Big Bend for a women’s hiking trip and had a few pre-dinner drinks with them while waiting on a table. Our newfound group of four decided to dine together since the dinner wait had extended to more than two hours.

After dinner we finally got to our motel room where we found a few critters. Our tent may have been the colder option, but it would have been the cleaner option.

The next morning we enjoyed our ‘free hotel breakfast’ by setting up our camp stove in the parking and treating ourselves to ‘room service.’

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Balanced Rock

We ventured onto the Grapevine Hills road in the northern section of the park to hike to Balanced Rock, a natural arch formed by a boulder resting upon a couple of other rocks. The hike takes you along a ridge of pinnacles before a quick scramble up to the archway.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

The border

Growing up along the Canadian border, it feels strange to me that some Americans feel a strained relationship with our Mexican neighbors. I can clearly remember going to the outlet mall in Niagara Falls, NY and finding a parking lot full of Ontario license plates. Hockey and minor league baseball games always featured both the Canadian and American national anthems. I can still recite all of the words to “O Canada.”

After 9/11, crossing into Canada became slightly harder, but it wasn’t until they enacted a passport requirement that it seemed disruptive to freely flow back and forth to take a hike or go to Toronto to see a museum or baseball game.

Big Bend hugs the southern border for more than 100 miles. The deepest trench of the Rio Grande creates the international border, although in many places shallow waters and sandbars make a crossing by foot or a quick swim very possible. The river doesn’t respect a hard boundary as it’s constantly moving, eroding the landscape and changing. Likewise, wildlife freely cross from one side to the other including bighorn sheep and black bears.

One of the oddities of Big Bend is its official Port of Entry that legalized border crossings so that American park visitors could cross into Mexico to have lunch. At the border, a park ranger gives a brief orientation, verifies that you have a passport, then sends you down to the river where you signal someone on the other side to row a boat over to pick you up.

When we arrived in Mexico we were assigned a guide that “worked for tips,” who walked the mile into town with us. He then served as the restaurant’s de facto host, sat us at a table and laid out our menus and to our surprise, waited for us to finish our meal so he could usher us through the village. By definition, this was the most authentic Mexican food I’ve ever eaten, but not quite the best. The margarita however was on-point...and gigantic.

Boquillas seems to survive exclusively on tourism. People of all ages try to sell you crafts and “No Wall” t-shirts as you walk through town. The nearest Mexican city is still 200 miles away on a series of paved and unpaved roads. A surprising number of F150 trucks sit alongside mules and horses that trot tourists into town. In the wake of 9/11, the border was closed and the town suffered as it lost its visitors. It took nearly 12 years to open the border crossing and allow for a cooperative flow of visitors who could experience a unique cultural experience of crossing an international boundary just to have lunch.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Driving from Panther Junction towards Rio Grande Village, you can see where the river is flowing. The dry desert turns into a strip that is surprisingly lush.

In 1944, President Roosevelt – who had designated Big Bend as a national park – wrote to the Mexican president: “I do not believe that this undertaking in the Big Bend will be complete until the entire park area in this region on both sides of the Río Grande forms one great international park.”

More than 75 years later his belief has yet to become a reality, although lands have been protected on both sides of the border. The US features 1,166,163 acres of protected land between national, state and wildlife management areas. In Mexico, 1,857,508 acres are protected. Uniting and designating these lands as an International Peace Park would create an area 167% larger than the Glacier Waterton International Peace Park on the US-Canada border and achieve the vision of a joint effort for the conservation of natural resources, plants & animals and scenic preservation.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Boquillas Canyon

We took an easy hike into the canyon and had great views of the river as we descended into an area rich in foliage. Along the way we found several illegal souvenir stands that Mexicans had crossed the river to setup with a money jar that worked on the honor system.

Boquillas Canyon was my favorite sight in the park. It’s walls tower overhead, and it’s pebbly beach made for a peaceful scene as we watched the sunlight fade.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Rio Grande Village

We spent two nights at this campground in the southern part of the park. It offered a quick drive to the port of entry, Boquillas Canyon and a camp store where we could take a shower before heading back to the airport.

At night the sky was completely black, so when the clouds briefly faded away, we had a great view of a million bright stars and the evening section of early season milky way.

Signs warned of protecting food from bears, but the annoyance of javelinas seemed to be the bigger threat. We saw a few coyotes along the road into camp, and heard packs doing a call and response routine throughout the night.

Big Bend National Park

The Window

My favorite trail of the trip was The Window. We started off by admiring the rust colored pinnacles of the Chisos mountains as we descended into a sparse forest below. That led into a meandering canyon where we admired bugs that skitted along the surface of the stream and pools. Finally we ended up at The Window, where the stream pours suddenly over a 200 foot drop with rocks framing the scene as a “window.”

Other hikers noted that we had just missed a black bear who had come to the stream for a drink.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Pine Canyon

When we were looking for a late afternoon hike, a ranger suggested to venture off the beaten path and explore Pine Canyon. We only encountered one other couple on this remote trail and enjoyed its solitude.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

The weird world of West Texas

Our last morning in Big Bend, we woke up early and packed up camp by 6 AM. We drove north out of the park just as it started to wake up in the predawn light. Dozens of deer grazed on brush along the side of the road.

We refueled in Marathon, the first town outside of the park’s northern boundary, and stopped at its “Target,” a roadside attraction where artists hung a replica sign on an old shed and placed a shopping cart out front.

In Marfa, we stopped into a pretentious coffee shop offering a $9 slice of avocado toast.

When we arrived back in El Paso with a few hours to spare, we gave ourselves one mission: find the best green chile cheeseburger around.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park surprised me. I was drawn in by its towering canyon walls, and surprised by its distinct areas of mountains, desert and river that support a wide variety of plant, mammal and bird life. It is full of contradictions: dry desert and lush river, hot days and bitterly cold nights, 7800 foot mountains and low-lying borderlands. Its also impossible to forget the contradiction of nature enjoying an open border and the impending threat of infrastructure that could close that border.

The solitude, dark skies, wildlife and variety of landscapes make it a jewel of the US National Park system.

Big Bend National Park

© 2026 Scott Richardson

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