Hike through Big Bend offers a window into the park’s past
BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK — On a Big Bend family camping trip long, long ago, a 10-year-old kid I vaguely remember woke before everybody else, laced up his U.S. Keds and in the cool of the morning started walking down a Chisos Basin trail toward the Window. He told no one.
He walked for maybe half an hour, mesmerized by the rocky V-shaped formation framing the clear blue sky just ahead, just ahead. When he realized the Window wasn’t just ahead, he turned around and headed back, only to encounter a few minutes later a grim-faced park ranger and, following closely behind, his mother, near tears. She had no doubt a bear or a mountain lion had dragged her wayward son into the brush and devoured him for breakfast.
The three of them walked back to the campsite, the ranger lecturing firmly about what could happen to a kid who wandered off alone. All these years later, he can see his two flat-topped younger brothers sitting on a cot, smirking. This time, it was big brother in trouble, not them.
I had no idea that years earlier a young U.S. customs inspector named Everett E. Townsend had felt the same fascination, the same mesmerizing attraction. A cowboy who grew up near Wharton, a Texas Ranger and a deputy U.S. marshal in borderlands Texas before age 23, Townsend was tracking stolen mules when he ventured into the Chisos Mountains on the last day of August 1894. Decades later, he recalled that what he discovered that day made him “see God as he had never seen Him before.”
‘Agua Pronto’
The young lawman vowed to find a way to preserve and protect the Big Bend area as best he could, and nearly 40 years later he got his chance. In 1932, after three terms as Brewster County sheriff (see the July 7 column), the people of far West Texas elected him state representative. In Austin in the spring of 1933, the old cowboy managed to corral enough mulish lawmakers in the midst of the Depression to pass a bill establishing Texas Canyons State Park; amazingly, Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson signed his bill into law. During a special session later that year, he successfully passed legislation changing the name to Big Bend State Park and expanded its holdings to more than 100,000 acres.
Townsend pushed to bring in young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps to develop the park, but the U.S. Army, the CCC’s overseer, objected, citing the lack of roads and water in the rough, semi-arid desert country. In April 1934, he led an expedition of six local men into the mountains to find water, reminding his companions that they needed to work quickly or the CCC and reluctant army officials would pass them by. When they at last broke through in the Chisos Basin and water began bubbling up from the hard, dry ground, the men called the well “Agua Pronto” (quick water).
The CCC built roads and trails and cabins that still stand, but Townsend wasn’t finished. He importuned Congressman R.E. Thomason of El Paso and U.S. Sen. Tom Connally of Texas to establish a national park. Thomason scoffed. He told Townsend he was damn sure nothing in West Texas was worth national park status.
Father of the park
What’s more, the congressman said, he had no interest in visiting the area. A blizzard of letters, calls and telegrams from Townsend’s friends changed his mind. “Tell Townsend for God’s sake to call off his dogs, and I’ll come and look at your old park,” he told a mutual friend in Alpine.
The visit had its desired effect. On March 1, 1935, Connally and Thomason sponsored companion legislation establishing Big Bend National Park. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the bill into law, and the park became reality on Sept. 5, 1943, after additional private lands were deeded to the federal government. In a ceremony at then-Sul Ross State College, Townsend was lauded as “the father of Big Bend National Park.”
Townsend died in 1948 at age 77, his lifelong dream fulfilled. Almost.
Having lived on both sides of the border, he envisioned an international park, well aware that the Sierra del Carmen range on the Mexican side was arguably more spectacular than Big Bend. The park would be una zona libre, a free park where visitors from two American nations would be free from customs and immigration regulations as long as they stayed within park boundaries. The idea still has its adherents, even though it seems even more distant these days than when Townsend was alive.
The second-highest peak in the Chisos Mountains is called Townsend Point, in honor of the man’s effort over decades to preserve one of the last wild places in America. It took me nearly as many decades, at long last, to complete my abortive Window trek.
A passing fantasy
Trudging along the rocky Window Trail a couple of Saturdays ago — alone this time, too — clouds rolled in and thunder echoed off towering canyon walls. Ribbons of green accented the red rock during this unusually wet August. The last quarter-mile or so of the 5.5-mile-long trail follows a clear mountain stream. Clumps of yellow butterflies fluttered atop shallow pools and small cascades. At the Window, the water poured out of its polished stone channel and dropped straight down to the desert floor 220 feet below.
It was quiet and beautiful and a little scary at the Window. I hung back and tried to peer over the edge without getting too close.
Hiking back uphill to the Chisos Basin Campground, hot and sweaty, my water bottle empty and my legs feeling the burn, I indulged a passing fantasy, one that can never be. I wanted to call home to Waco and hear a familiar voice answer. “Hey, Mom,” I’d say. “Remember when we went on that Big Bend trip and you had to send the ranger after me? Remember? Well, guess what...”