42 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?

Chihuahuan Desert country lies mostly in Mexico, which is why Big Bend, at the desert's northern end, is the largest protected piece on the US side.

The Chisos Mountains hold what distinction among US ranges?

The only range entirely inside one national park, the Chisos stand so high above the desert that they run 10 to 20 °F cooler, cool enough for forests of oak, juniper and pine.

Big Bend National Park lies entirely within which Texas county, the state's largest?

Brewster County became the largest in Texas in 1897, when two neighbouring counties that had never been organised, Buchel and Foley, were folded into it.

What is the highest point in Big Bend National Park?

Emory Peak tops out at about 7,800 feet; it was named in 1852 by a surveyor mapping the Big Bend for William H. Emory, who led the US–Mexico boundary survey.

By what name is the river that bounds Big Bend National Park known in Mexico?

Río Bravo was the Spanish colonial name for the lower river, while the upper river went by Río del Norte; Mexico now uses Bravo for the whole river, in full Río Bravo del Norte.

More than 450 species of which animals have been recorded in Big Bend National Park?

Birds top the park's lists because so many are just passing through: of about 450 species reported, only 56 live in Big Bend all year, the rest being migrants and seasonal visitors.

Visitors to Big Bend National Park report more than 150 sightings a year of which big cat?

Mountain lion sightings top 150 a year, most of them along park roads; the cats normally avoid people, and rangers tell hikers who meet one never to run, because running triggers the instinct to chase.

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.

About 60 species of which desert plants grow in Big Bend, among them claretcup and pitaya?

Cacti come in about 60 kinds here because the park climbs some 6,000 feet from hot river floodplain to cool mountain woodland, giving different species their own niches.

Big Bend camps once boiled which desert plant for a product used in polishes and chewing gum?

Candelilla coats its leafless stems in wax to hold in water; boiled out in vats, that wax was in heavy demand in both world wars and still goes into cosmetics.

Which giant pterosaur was found in Big Bend's Javelina Formation in 1971?

Quetzalcoatlus, named for the Aztec feathered-serpent god, came to light when geology student Douglas Lawson, doing fieldwork for his master's thesis, spotted a wing bone eroding out of the ground.

Fossil hunters in Big Bend have dug up the huge neck vertebrae of which long-necked dinosaur?

Alamosaurus owes its name to Ojo Alamo, the place in New Mexico where the first bones were found, and has nothing to do with the Alamo in San Antonio.

Which people crossed Big Bend on a trail named after them to raid deep into Mexico until the mid-1800s?

The Comanche rode south each autumn under the full 'Comanche moon', driving stolen horses and captives home along a trail beaten up to a mile wide across the Big Bend.

Which shipwrecked Spanish explorer may have passed near the Big Bend around 1535?

Cabeza de Vaca sailed with the Narváez expedition to conquer Florida; one of only four survivors, he spent eight years crossing the Southwest as a trader and faith healer among Native peoples.

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

Flipper was the first African American to graduate from West Point, in 1877; dismissed from the Army in 1882 after a disputed court-martial, he was pardoned by President Clinton in 1999.

A May 1916 raid on which Big Bend settlement led President Wilson to mobilise the National Guard?

Glenn Springs was held by just nine cavalrymen, who fought from an adobe building for hours until the raiders set its roof alight; three soldiers and a storekeeper's young son were killed.

Which name, inspired by its river gorges, did lawmakers give Big Bend as a state park in 1933?

Texas Canyons State Park began in 1933 as just fifteen sections of state land around the canyons; within months it was enlarged and renamed Big Bend State Park.

Big Bend became a national park six days after which World War II event?

D-Day came on June 6, 1944, the same day the deed to the park's land was formally presented to President Roosevelt; Big Bend became a national park on June 12.

Which season is the busiest for visitors at Big Bend National Park?

Spring is busiest because March and April bring mild days and the desert bloom, while summer afternoons in the low desert regularly top 100 °F.

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

Mercury, or quicksilver, was baked out of the red cinnabar ore in furnaces; long before the miners came, Native Americans are said to have used the same ore as paint in rock art.

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

The Window is the gap where Oak Creek spills off the basin's rim over a slickrock pour-off, so the notch frames a wide view of the desert far below.

The javelina that roams Big Bend's campgrounds is properly known by which other name?

Peccary is right: the collared peccary is often mistaken for a wild pig, but it belongs to a separate family of hoofed mammals and is no pig at all.

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

Carroll Shelby, the Texan racing driver turned car builder, co-founded the 1967 cook-off; two separate championships now draw thousands of 'chiliheads' there each November.

Big Bend visitors can cross the river to which Mexican village, whose border 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 a mining company build to move ore across the river from Mexico into the Big Bend?

A cable car, or aerial tramway, swung silver and lead ore over the river from mines on the Mexican side, and a twin settlement grew up on the Texas bank to serve the trade.

What did J.O. Langford set up beside the river from 1909, creating the Big Bend's first tourist attraction?

A hot-springs bathhouse: Langford, weakened by malaria since his Mississippi boyhood, took a 21-day cure in the 105 °F water, then charged other bathers for the same treatment.

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

A wildfire that jumped over from Mexico crossed the river on May 22, 2019 in 110 °F heat; a wind shift showered embers on the old Army barracks that housed the store and visitor center.

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

Gold, the top tier, marks skies 'free from all but the most minor impacts of light pollution'; the park protects that darkness by fitting its own outdoor lamps with shielded LED fixtures.

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

Santa Elena Canyon, where the drive ends, was sawn by the river through limestone laid down in a shallow sea that once covered the Big Bend, leaving nearly vertical walls.

Where is Big Bend National Park's headquarters?

Panther Junction lies where the roads from the north and west entrances meet the road down to the river, a natural crossroads for the headquarters and the main visitor centre.

Which roughly 30-mile Big Bend backpacking circuit links the Chisos high country with the desert below?

Outer Mountain Loop hikers leave the Chisos Basin, drop to the desert on the Dodson Trail and climb back up; springs marked on the map are often dry there, so every litre of water has to be planned.

What built Big Bend's Chisos Mountains?

Volcanic eruptions and intrusions of molten rock built the Chisos tens of millions of years ago; erosion then stripped away the softer rock around them, leaving the hard cores standing as peaks.

Which Texas wildflower has a Big Bend species that grows far taller than its roadside cousins?

Bluebonnet is right: the Big Bend or Chisos bluebonnet towers over the familiar kind, and since 1971, when lawmakers widened the honour, every bluebonnet species has counted as the Texas state flower.

Parts of Big Bend's South Rim trail close during the nesting season of which bird of prey?

Peregrine falcons nest on the cliffs beneath the rim, so the Northeast and Southeast Rim sections of the trail are closed to hikers while the falcons are nesting.

In 1976 UNESCO added Big Bend National Park to its international network of what?

Biosphere reserves are chosen as outstanding examples of an ecosystem; Big Bend qualified as one of the most pristine stretches of desert left in the United States.

Which spiny plant, found only in the desert around Big Bend, is known as that desert's indicator species?

Lechuguilla, an agave nicknamed shin-dagger for its stiff, sharp leaves, grows nowhere else; each plant flowers once in its life and then dies.

At about 1,250 square miles, Big Bend National Park covers more ground than the land area of which US state?

Rhode Island has only about 1,034 square miles of land against the park's 1,252; Texas bought most of that ground in the early 1940s with a $1.5 million appropriation and gave it to the nation.

Which 1848 treaty put the border in the river beside Big Bend?

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican–American War and ran the border down the river's deepest channel, which is why the park's land stops in mid-stream.

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

Ghost or spirit is one proposed meaning; a rival theory makes the name Spanish instead, from the Castilian hechizos, 'enchantment', and the question has never been settled.

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

The Mescalero Apache made the Chisos Mountains their base in the 1700s, displacing the Chisos people and raiding Spanish settlements to the south until campaigns in the 1770s and 1780s drove them north.

What do ecologists call isolated forested ranges like the Chisos?

Sky island is the term: the Chisos run about 20 degrees cooler than the river, so pines, junipers and even a few aspens and Douglas firs survive there, stranded above the desert.