river in Big Bend National Park, Texas

The Rio Grande and its tributaries run through southwest Texas' Big Bend National Park, one of the most remote national parks.

Photograph by Inge Johnsson, Alamy

Big Bend Hosts the Most Bird Species of Any National Park

This remote Texas park is home to a remarkable diversity of life.

November 05, 2009
3 min read

Location: Texas
Established: June 12, 1944
Size: 801,163 acres

Chihuahuan Desert vegetation—bunchgrasses, creosote bushes, cactuses, lechuguillas, yuccas, sotols, and more—covers most of the terrain. But the Rio Grande and its lush floodplains and steep, narrow canyons form almost a park of their own. So do the Chisos Mountains; up to 20 degrees cooler than the desert floor, they harbor pine, juniper, and oak, as well as deer, mountain lions, bears, and other wildlife. A heavy rain transforms the desert: Normally dry creek beds roar with water, and seeds long dormant burst into fields of wildflowers.

The rocks of Big Bend are a complex lot. Two seas, one after another, flowed and subsided in the region hundreds of millions of years ago, leaving thick deposits of limestone and shale. The present mountains, except the Chisos, uplifted along with the Rockies, roughly 75 million years ago. Around the same time, a 40-mile-wide trough—most of the present-day park—sank along fault lines, leaving the cliffs of Santa Elena Canyon to the west and the Sierra del Carmen to the east rising 1,500 feet and more above the desert floor. In the center, volcanic activity spewed layer upon layer of ash into the air and squeezed molten rock up through the ground to form the Chisos Mountains some 35 million years ago. Molten rock also cooled and hardened underground later to be exposed by erosion.

Big Bend's topographic variety supports a remarkable diversity of life, including 1,200 plant species—some found nowhere else in the world.

People have passed through this terrain for at least 10,000 years. The human pageant in historical times has included Apache, Spanish conquistadores, Comanche, U.S. soldiers, miners, ranchers and farmers, Mexican revolutionaries, and international outlaws and bandits.

Did You Know?

At least 450 species of birds inhabit the park—more than any other national park in the United States.

hikers on the Nankoweap Trail, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
a hiker on the Teton Crest Trail, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
hiker on the Wonderland Trail, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington
a hiker at Vernal Falls, Yosemite National Park, California
a hiker climbing the South Rim trail, Big Bend National Park, Texas
a hiker on the Greenstone Trail in Isle Royale National Park, Michigan
hikers in Lake Clark National Park, Alaska
a hiker in Redwood National Park, California
a hiker on a trail over the High Divide in Olympic National Park, Washington
the a geyser near Bisquit Basin in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
1 of 10
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Photograph by Mauritius Images/Alamy
Copy for this series includes excerpts from National Geographic Guide to the National Parks of the United States, Seventh Edition, 2012, and our National Parks series featured in National Geographic Traveler.

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