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COPYRIGHT 2001 Texas Monthly, Inc.
The remote backcountry of Big Bend Ranch State Park is open to the public. Welcome to the best wilderness getaway in Texas.
The first thing you need to know about Big Bend Ranch State Park is that it is more of a ranch than a park. A real ranch gate bars the way into the interior--and it's locked; to go in, you have to get the combination at the Fort Leaton visitors center. Beyond the gate are dirt roads, a herd of Longhorns, and a rugged and untamed land that still belongs to deer, coyotes, antelope, javelina, mountain lions, and black bears. It is desert backcountry, where an ever-present coating of dust covers the jeans, fills the nostrils, and blankets Suburbans and Range Rovers. And it is huge: 287,000 acres, more than four hundred square miles. Big Bend Ranch is the real thing, not one of those gentrified weekend-hobby ranchettes with white picket fences and manicured grounds.
Keep in mind that, despite the similarities in the names and the fact that they are only an hour apart, Big Bend Ranch and Big Bend National Park have little in common except that they share the same desert environment. The national park has lower deserts, higher mountains, the alpine microclimate of the Chisos Basin, and more spectacular points of interests, such as Santa Elena Canyon and the South Rim. The ranch is considerably wetter, with 116 active springs, 86 of them flowing year-round--an estimated one third of all fresh water found in the Trans-Pecos. The national park is far more developed, with paved roads and ample amenities for visitors. Although the state has owned the ranch since 1988, the dirt road to Sauceda, the ranch headquarters, has been open to the public only since 1991. The new visitors center at Sauceda, with rest rooms and shower facilities, opened in 1998, and the bunkhouse was remodeled to accommodate couples. The improvements have made the ranch more user-friendly, but as Texas Parks and Wildlife executive director Andrew Sansom, told me, "It's not Big Bend National Park. It's more like being in a park in the Third World." In other words, Big Bend Ranch is not for everybody. But for me, knowing that there remains in Texas a place this rough, this solitary, this intimidating, is somehow reassuring.
BEFORE YOU GO If you plan to explore the interior of the ranch and you don't have a high-clearance vehicle, consider renting one. Do not attempt to travel...
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