Big Bend National Park: History, Highlights, and One- to Three-Day Adventures

Plan a Big Bend trip that fits your days, your legs, and the park as it really is right now.

Big Bend National Park is three parks in one: Chihuahuan Desert, the cool Chisos Mountains rising nearly 8,000 feet in the middle, and the Rio Grande cutting limestone canyons along the border with Mexico. It's also remote and enormous, and its sights sit at the ends of long roads. This guide is for travelers with one, two, or three days who want to spend that time on the trail and at the overlooks, not backtracking across the desert.

Inside you'll find

• Nine complete itineraries: easy, moderate, and strenuous plans for a one-day, two-day, and three-day visit, each with start times, trail distances and elevation, driving estimates, meals, water, rest, and a weather or closure alternative for every day.
• Plans that keep each day in one region, so your driving stays reasonable.
• Hikes from short accessible paths to the Lost Mine Trail, the Window, the South Rim, and Emory Peak, with the exposed summit scramble treated as a separate decision.
• A wildlife chapter profiling fourteen animals visitors commonly see, from Mexican jays, roadrunners, and vermilion flycatchers to javelinas, Carmen Mountains white-tailed deer, and the black bears that returned to the Chisos on their own, each with a photograph, where and when to look, and how to stay safe around bears, rattlesnakes, and tarantulas.
• Honest handling of current conditions. When this edition was prepared, flooding had closed the road to Santa Elena Canyon and Hot Springs, so no itinerary depends on either, and each shows where to add them back once they reopen.
• A history of the Big Bend, from Indigenous peoples and the Comanche Trail to Spanish presidios, river farms, the Castolon trading post, mercury mining, the Hot Springs bathhouse, and the Texas campaign that created the park.
• A sightseeing chapter on the Chisos Basin, the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, Santa Elena Canyon, Rio Grande Village, Boquillas Canyon, the Fossil Discovery Exhibit, and some of the darkest night skies in the lower 48.
• Practical planning for fuel, water, heat, seasons, lodging and campground reservations, accessibility, river safety, and crossing to Boquillas del Carmen, Mexico.
• Five simple orientation maps and 29 photographs placed beside the passages they illustrate.

Whether you want a scenic drive with short walks and a sky full of stars or a long day on the South Rim, this book helps you pick the right plan and carry it out with fewer surprises.

This is an independent guide. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Park Service.