Big Bend: America’s Last Frontier

West Texas has often been considered one of America’s last frontiers. As a no-man’s land of cacti, tarantulas, cow skulls and rattlesnakes, it’s a place where you can drive for days without seeing more than a half dozen cars and pitch a tent on side the road for a quiet night of sleep. There is nothing in this state that is small: big men wearing big hats drive big trucks on ranches that stretch so far and wide, no one has a clue where they begin and end.

For the state of Texas, the numbers are simply unbelievable: more than a quarter million square miles, seven percent of America’s landmass, and over 300,000 miles of roadway. It’s a funny thing to think that the city of El Paso is actually closer to Los Angeles than it is to the other side of Texas. Only a gargantuan state such as this could house one of the nation’s largest and most secluded national parks.

Covering more than a million acres of the Chihuahuan Desert, Big Bend National Park is larger than the entire state of Rhode Island and has more than 234 miles of river running through its boundaries. Yet, it is one of the least visited national parks in the United States. Whereas the Smoky Mountains and Yosemite are sometimes crowded and overwhelmed by visitors, one can travel the back roads of Big Bend for days without seeing another human being. It’s a place so big and lonely that a Mexican cowboy once called it the place “where rainbows wait for rain.”

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

From the frontier outpost of Fort Stockton, there’s little more than a lonely two-lane road to Big Bend National Park. As one of the country’s largest detours, it leads straight to nowhere, past the small town of Marathon, winding its way for more than 130 miles through mountainous, barren desert blanketed by lunar canyons, badlands, bunch grass, yucca and jagged cliffs. Slamming into the Mexican border it meanders back towards the ghost town of Terlingua and the ramshackle Mexican settlement of Ojinaga. From there to El Paso lies another couple hundred miles of a barren, mountainous void.

For hundreds of years, Spanish and Anglo settlers had simply ignored this part of Texas. With so much space yet so few people, much of West Texas and Big Bend has historically grown without a system of laws – there was simply no one around to enforce them. In the 1700s, the area was a constant battleground for the Apache Indians who eventually drove off many Spanish settlers. The Commanchees then ruled in the early part of the 19th century, often using Big Bend as the back road to Old Mexico. Pancho Villa used the area to stage rebel attacks in Mexico while later in the century, candelilleras (wax makers) smuggled their products into the United States. At last count, there were only 13,000 people down here, living in an area the size of Maryland.

For many years, there really wasn’t even any Border Patrol enforcement here. Visitors used to be able to wade across the Rio Grande or hire a man in a rickety rowboat to take them across the waters to the small village of Santa Elena. In the ‘80s, the dusty settlement was home to local legend drug lord Pablo Acosta. In 1987, three US DEA helicopters full of Mexican soldiers took off from the Panther Junction Ranger station to mount one of the only cross border gun battles in recent history. Acosta was killed but the tale lives on in locals, park rangers and in books in the Panther Junction gift shop. Today, Santa Elena is a quiet village of little more than a few dozen families, more content catering to tourists than drug lords, with two restaurants, a small museum and a grocery store. Due to recent changes in border security, you’re no longer supposed to cross here but in most cases, no one would know anyway.

On the Mexican side of the border, the seclusion is just as profound—the nearest Mexican city of any decent size is Chihuahua, a day or two away by truck over some of the most horrendous dirt roads in the region.

No matter how one arrives here, Big Bend is a land made for driving. Traveling the lonely roads of the park during some times of the year, one might see little more than a dozen cars a day. It’s a common practice to wave at everyone you see because out here, people who live hundreds of miles apart could be considered neighbors.

Inside the park, there are a number of driving opportunities such as the 22-mile Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. Heading south towards the border, it winds its way over mountains, past massive gravel deposits, and along the Rio Grande to the Santa Elena Canyon. In the center of the park, the 9-mile Basin Drive climbs its way out of the desert lowlands into the woodlands of the Chisos Mountains, the park’s “island of green”. Within only a couple of miles, the vegetation magically changes from desert shrub to green forest. As an oasis of life, water and cool breezes, the Chisos offer the only refuge from the brutal heat during the summer months and are popular with campers.

Off the park’s paved two-lane highways, there are more than 150 miles of backcountry roads leading to abandoned ranches and turn-of-the-century mining camps. Travelers with high clearance and four-wheel drive have endless opportunities for off-the-beaten-path adventures. Those not properly outfitted for such journeys had better not attempt it – rangers usually end up having to bail out a couple cars a week.

While Big Bend is easily seen from the inside of a car, it’s real secrets can be discovered on foot. With more than 200 miles of developed trails ranging in elevation from 1,800 to 7,835 feet, there are unlimited hiking opportunities in the park. Down the Window Trail, there’s a cleft in the mountains where a waterfall drops almost 200 feet to the desert floor. Down by the Rio Grande, the Santa Elena Canyon features red stone walls that shoot 1,500 feet in the air.

When the sun goes down, the wilds of Big Bend belong to the desert animals that hunt and scavenge beneath the millions of stars in the clear sky. While the roadrunners sleep, kangaroo rats, rattlesnakes and mule deer take to the barren land as the plentiful javelinas (wild boars) snort their way across the brush of the desert. Short-sightedness and curiosity often cause packs of them to drift towards camps at night.

While bear-proof boxes are provided for campers in the Chisos Mountains, rangers constantly warn people about the dangers of leaving food in a tent. Javelinas have been known to tear their way into just about anything. One can’t get any closer to nature than this.

Scattered around the desert, are the remnants of the area’s once-booming quicksilver industry. From 1910 to 1920, Texas mines produced about one-third of all U.S. production. Deep in the interior of the park down a treacherous gravel road are the ruins of the Mariscal Mine, where in the 1940s, workers earned about $1.50 per day. Although it was abandoned in 1943, the mine has remained untouched with bricks, condensers and mine tailings still in place, many with traces of Mercury. Further out in the park lie remnants of old Indian camps with petroglyphs and pictographs while the backcountry Glen Springs road leads a cemetery, coral and dipping chute, the only remains of a once thriving military outpost.

Just outside the Western perimeter of the park, lies the decaying ghost town of Terlingua. As an old quicksilver mining settlement abandoned near the start of World War II, its official population stands at a mere twenty-five inhabitants. At one time, more than 2,000 workers had lived here, but it’s now a patch of rusted machinery, mining tunnels and walls without roofs. A new community has started to develop in recent years, catering to artsy-types looking to live on the frontier and to tourists looking for jeep tours, rafting trips and horseback rides.

Share on Facebook