Big Bend Ranch State Park

Big Bend Ranch State Park covers more than 300,000 acres of Brewster and Presidio counties, the largest park in the state system. It was a working ranch first. Andres Madrid ran sheep north of Lajitas in the 1870s, the Bogel brothers pieced small outfits together in the 1910s, and the Fowlkes brothers carried on after the Depression, until the Big Bend Ranch was among the ten biggest in Texas. Robert O. Anderson of Atlantic Richfield offered it to the state for $8 million, and after years of argument the Parks and Wildlife Commission approved the purchase on July 21, 1988, for $8.8 million. It opened on a limited basis in 1991 and fully in 2007.

The land is rough volcanic country. The park holds the crater of the long-dead Bofecillos Volcano, Colorado Canyon, popular with paddlers, and some ninety major archaeological sites. Its two entrances are the Barton Warnock Visitor Center just east of Lajitas and Fort Leaton near Presidio, linked by FM 170, the Camino del Rio, which winds about sixty miles along the Rio Grande between them, climbing and dropping past river overlooks.

Inside are 238 miles of trails for hikers, bikers and horses, 70 miles of rough dirt roads that need high clearance or four-wheel drive, primitive campsites, and the Sauceda Bunkhouse. The park is an International Dark Sky Park. Get permits at either entrance. From late spring through summer, temperatures pass 100 degrees by late morning, so carry extra water and stay off the trails in the afternoon.