Gateway to Big Bend: The Park at the End of the Road
Near Alpine, Texas
From Alpine, the road south runs eighty miles through the Chihuahuan Desert before reaching the entrance to Big Bend National Park, one of the most remote national parks in the lower forty-eight states. The park protects more than eight hundred thousand acres at the great bend of the Rio Grande, where the river curves north before resuming its eastward course toward the Gulf of Mexico. The land was set aside as a Texas state park in nineteen thirty-three after a campaign to purchase private ranch land.
It was transferred to the federal government and established as a national park in June of nineteen forty-four. For the first years of its existence, the park was far from any large town, and visitors traveled long distances to reach it. The park encompasses three distinct landscapes: the Chisos Mountains at the center, which rise to over seventy-eight hundred feet and support their own cooler ecology; the broad Chihuahuan Desert lowlands surrounding them; and the spectacular river canyons along the international border with Mexico.
Alpine serves as the principal supply point for visitors to Big Bend. The city's hotels, grocery stores, fuel stations, and outdoor outfitters exist partly because the national park is at the end of a very long road from anywhere, and most of the people making that drive pass through Alpine first.
