Big Bend National Park Announces Closures
April 12, 2024
Starting in early 2025, visitors to Big Bend National Park will see major changes to how and when they can access the park’s Chisos Basin area, as a planned two-year project to tear down and rebuild the park’s only lodge and restaurant is expected to begin.
The current mountain lodge in the Chisos Basin was originally built in 1964.
In 2020, Congress approved a $22 million project that involves the complete demolition and rebuilding of the park’s Chisos Mountain Lodge. Under the plan, an existing visitor’s center and small retail store near the lodge would also be torn down and incorporated into the new building.
“This is probably one of the most impactful projects that the park has seen in many decades, and will probably fundamentally change the way people access and visit the park,” Chad Tinney, the park’s acting superintendent, said at a recent public meeting in Terlingua.
Map of the Chisos Basin area.
Park officials landed on the plan for a new lodge after concluding that decades of damage from the clay soil shifting beneath the existing building would be too costly to fix with a renovation.
Under the park’s current access plan, all of the Chisos Basin visitor facilities – including the group campground in the area – will be closed to the public once construction begins in the spring of 2025 and will remain closed until the project is finished.
Individual campsites – those close to parking and nearby backcountry sites – and the trail system in the area will remain open to the public, but driving access into the area will be much more restricted.
Tinney said there will “certainly” be impacts to visitors accessing the Chisos Basin even before the construction starts, as contractors begin staging materials.
Artist rendering of possible proposed Chisos Mountain Lodge and restaurant complex.
“But what we’re shooting for is nothing before Spring Break,” he said. “Let’s get through Spring Break and then slowly start moving into this plan, fully implemented in late spring.”
If you’ve never been to Big Bend National Park and want to avoid what will assuredly be a substantive impact on easily accessing the Chisos Basin and corresponding trailheads to hike and/or backpack the South Rim, you may want to plan to visit the park ahead of 2025 or consider the park’s planned limits on access during specific times once the project begins.
Editor Note: Special thanks to Marfa Public Radio for providing this update.
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