47 Fun Facts About Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park takes its name from a great curve in which river?

The Rio Grande, which forms well over 1,000 miles of the US–Mexico border, makes a sweeping turn along the park's southern edge, cutting three deep limestone canyons.

Big Bend is the largest US protected area of which of North America's deserts?

Big Bend is the largest US protected area of the Chihuahuan Desert, which stretches deep into Mexico; south of the river the park is flanked by two Mexican protected areas.

The Chisos Mountains hold what distinction among US mountain ranges?

They cover just 40 square miles and are the southernmost range in the mainland United States, but not the whole country.

The whole park lies within which single Texas county?

Brewster County, the largest county in Texas, holds the entire park; its seat, Alpine, is about 100 miles from park headquarters.

What is the highest point in the park?

Emory Peak rises to about 7,825 feet, roughly 6,000 feet above the river, and is named for William H. Emory, chief surveyor of the 1852 boundary survey; from the basin the nearer Casa Grande looks taller.

Which of these is not one of the three canyons the river cuts through the park?

Palo Duro is the huge canyon in the Texas Panhandle; the park's three cut through limestone uplifts with nearly vertical walls.

How many bird species have been recorded in the park?

More than 450 bird species have been recorded in Big Bend, more than in any other US national park; the count sits alongside some 1,200 plant species, 56 reptiles and 75 mammals.

Which small grey songbird breeds nowhere in the United States except the high canyons of the Chisos?

The Colima warbler arrives in mid-April, nests on the ground in the oak-maple woods around Boot Canyon and the South Rim, and heads back to southwestern Mexico by mid-September.

Roughly how many cougars actually live in the park, despite some 150 sightings reported each year?

Only around two dozen cougars are thought to live in the park; most animals hide by day, and it comes alive at night with coyotes, kangaroo rats, grey foxes and collared peccaries.

Which animal recolonised the Chisos Mountains on its own in the late 1980s?

Mexican black bears, nearly wiped out locally by the mid-1900s, wandered back into the Chisos from Mexico's Sierra del Carmen in the late 1980s and re-established a breeding population.

Which predator did the state of Texas refuse to let the park reintroduce in the late 1980s?

Texas blocked a late-1980s plan to reintroduce the Mexican wolf, arguing over whether the park held enough deer and javelinas to feed a pack; the subspecies had been wiped out in Texas by 1970.

How many cactus species grow in the park?

About 60 cactus species grow in Big Bend, prickly pear, claretcup and pitaya the showy ones; the park has some 1,200 plant species overall and about 3,600 kinds of insect.

Camps along the Rio Grande once boiled which desert plant for a commercial product?

Candelilla (Euphorbia antisyphilitica) yields a hard vegetable wax, boiled out of the stems at riverside camps; candelilla wax went into cosmetics, polishes and chewing gum, a mainstay of the border economy.

Which giant pterosaur was found in the park's Javelina Formation in 1971?

Quetzalcoatlus, named for the Aztec feathered-serpent god Quetzalcoatl, was found when graduate student Douglas Lawson spotted a wing bone in an arroyo; its wingspan is estimated at 33 to 36 feet.

Barnum Brown and R.T. Bird found neck vertebrae of which giant sauropod in the park in 1940?

Alamosaurus, a long-necked titanosaur, is the park's giant sauropod; Brown and Bird's 1940 dig also turned up jawbones of the huge crocodylian Deinosuchus.

The park's redesigned Fossil Discovery Exhibit opened in which year?

The redesigned Fossil Discovery Exhibit opened in January 2017; it replaced an older roadside bone display that had shown the horse ancestor Hyracotherium and the hippo-like Coryphodon, whose real fossils were swapped for replicas.

Which people crossed the park on a named trail on their way to raid deep into Mexico until the mid-1800s?

The Comanche Trail passed near the hot springs on the river; the last great native war leader in the region was an Apache of Spanish ancestry named Alzate.

Which Spanish explorer's expedition passed near the Big Bend around 1535?

Cabeza de Vaca, a shipwreck survivor walking across the continent, passed near the Big Bend around 1535; later Spanish expeditions hunted metals or converts, and in the late 1700s Spain built presidios along the river.

Lieutenant Henry Flipper, who served near the Big Bend, was the first African American to do what?

Many soldiers guarding Trans-Pecos Texas were Black 'buffalo soldiers', a name apparently given to them by Native Americans.

A May 1916 raid on which settlement led Wilson to mobilise the Texas National Guard and station cavalry there?

Glenn Springs, a wax-camp settlement with a nine-man Army detachment, was raided on the night of May 5, 1916; the attack drew national headlines during the Mexican Revolution.

What was the area called when lawmakers in Austin first protected it in 1933?

The legislature created Texas Canyons State Park in 1933 and renamed it Big Bend State Park later that year; Congress passed enabling legislation in 1935 and Texas deeded the land to the federal government.

In which year did Big Bend become a national park and open to visitors?

Big Bend became a national park on June 12, 1944 and opened to visitors on July 1 that year, in the middle of World War II.

Between 2009 and 2019, about how many people visited the park in an average year?

Big Bend averaged about 377,000 visitors a year between 2009 and 2019, making it one of the least-visited national parks in the lower 48 as well as one of the largest and most remote.

Which metal was extracted from the cinnabar ore mined at Terlingua and Mariscal?

Mercury, or quicksilver, was roasted out of cinnabar; the Terlingua district yielded nearly 150,000 flasks before falling prices shut its mines in the 1940s, and Native Americans reportedly used the red ore for pictographs.

What is the V-shaped notch in the Chisos Basin's western rim called?

The Window is the pour-off notch through which the Chisos Basin drains westward; the Window Trail descends about 2.8 miles from the Basin trailhead to its slickrock lip.

Which Chicago businessman founded the Chisos Mining Company that built Terlingua?

Howard Perry, a Chicago businessman, founded the Chisos Mining Company in 1903; his mine ran 23 miles of workings on 17 levels before the company went bankrupt in 1942.

Which car maker with a huge ranch nearby co-founded Terlingua's 1967 chili cook-off?

Carroll Shelby, who owned a huge ranch near Terlingua, helped launch the 1967 cook-off with writer Frank X. Tolbert; two rival championships grew from it, held on the first Saturday of November.

Visitors cross the Rio Grande to which Mexican village, whose crossing reopened in 2013?

Boquillas del Carmen lost nearly half its people after the crossing was closed following the September 11 attacks; it reopened in April 2013 as a Class B port of entry with limited weekly hours.

What did the mining company at Boquillas build across the river around 1900 to move ore?

The company strung an aerial cable car, or tramway, about six miles across the river to carry ore from Mexico's Sierra del Carmen mines; up to 4,000 people lived in the village until mining stopped in 1919.

Since June 2009, what does Homeland Security consider a river float trip in the park to be?

Because the river is the border, Homeland Security has treated a float trip as an international departure since June 2009; paddlers need a passport or similar ID to 're-enter' the United States even if they never touch the Mexican bank.

What did J.O. Langford start beside the river in 1909, the area's first tourist attraction?

Langford, a malaria sufferer from Mississippi, claimed the hot-springs homestead sight unseen, took a 21-day cure in the 105 °F water and built a bathhouse, later adding a store and motor court.

Which Spanish traveller visited the hot springs in 1747 and found Apaches farming there?

Petroglyphs at the site show it was used long before; the water carries traces of lithium, arsenic, uranium and tungsten.

What destroyed much of the Castolon Historic District in May 2019?

With 110 °F heat and gusting winds, embers showered the district and gutted the barracks that housed the store and visitor center.

Which tier did the International Dark-Sky Association award the park's night sky in 2012?

Gold, the top IDA tier, means skies 'free from all but the most minor impacts of light pollution'; Park Service measurements show Big Bend has the least light pollution of any park unit in the lower 48.

The 30-mile Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive ends at which canyon?

The drive ends at the Santa Elena Canyon overlook and trailhead, passing the Mule Ears and the Castolon Historic District on the way; it is named for the park's first superintendent, Ross Maxwell.

Where is the park's headquarters?

Panther Junction, the park headquarters and main visitor centre, sits where the 28-mile road from the north entrance ends; from there a 21-mile road drops about 2,000 feet to the river.

The Outer Mountain Loop in the Chisos is a backpacking circuit of roughly what length?

The Outer Mountain Loop runs about 30 miles: it joins the South Rim loop, drops into the desert on the Dodson Trail and climbs back into the Chisos Basin via the Blue Creek and Laguna Meadow trails.

The Chisos Mountains were built by volcanic activity during which epoch?

The Eocene volcanism that built the Chisos dates them to roughly 35 to 44 million years old; the range runs about 20 miles across the heart of the park.

The Chisos Basin Road climbs to about what elevation at Panther Pass?

The road tops out at about 5,679 feet at Panther Pass, then drops into the basin, trailhead for the Pinnacles Trail and the semi-technical scramble up the park's highest peak.

Some of the park's rim trails close from February to May to protect which nesting bird?

Peregrine falcons nest on the cliffs below the rim; the Northeast and Southeast Rim trails and nearby backcountry campsites shut from February to May for the breeding season.

What is the name of the tiny school district based inside the park?

San Vicente ISD, one of the smallest districts in Texas, runs a single small school inside the park; its high-schoolers travel out to Big Bend High School in Terlingua.

The Cañón de Santa Elena protected area across the river from the park lies in which Mexican state?

The Cañón de Santa Elena flora and fauna protection area, decreed on 7 November 1994, lies in Chihuahua, covering parts of the municipalities of Manuel Benavides and Ojinaga.

Roughly how many acres does Big Bend National Park cover?

That is about 1,252 square miles, all inside Brewster County, making it one of the largest yet least-visited parks in the lower 48.

Approximately how many miles of the Rio Grande does the park administer?

The park administers 118 miles of the Rio Grande, a river that forms more than 1,000 miles of international boundary in total; the stretch includes three deep limestone canyons.

One theory says the name of the Chisos Mountains comes from a Native American word meaning what?

One theory traces Chisos to a Native American word for 'ghost', the range's peaks seeming to float above the desert; the rival theory derives it from the Castilian hechizos, meaning 'enchantment'.

Which Apache group began invading the Big Bend region around the start of the 18th century?

The Mescalero Apache pushed into the Big Bend in the early 1700s and displaced the Chisos people; a century later the Comanche were crossing the region on their raids into Mexico.

The Chisos Mountains cover roughly how many square miles?

The Chisos cover roughly 40 square miles, a compact range rising from the desert; its higher slopes are partly forested and were logged and overgrazed before the park era.