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Ashley Colvin
I recall visiting Big Bend for the first time and thinking to myself, “it’s like being on another planet - specifically, Mars.”
In “The Story of Big Bend National Park,” author, John Jameson illustrates how foreign the park seems: The topography of Big Bend is so barren and jagged, that America’s astronauts in the 1960s took field trips to the park to prepare them for landing on the moon. There are, in fact, parts of the area that disrupt senses of familiarity, while replacing them with a slight feeling of magnetism. Of course, it’s not for me to overstate, but to encourage interest in experiencing it for yourself.
My father, Chuck, brought the marvel of Big Bend into my life when I was 22. It was his favorite place to hike - visiting the area often during spring, summer and fall with his two brothers. Remembering our first trip together I decided to try my luck to keep up with him during one of his annual hikes. We took the Chisos Basin Loop Trail far enough to catch a glimpse of the “Window” as high as we could from above. The “Window” is an open view of a vast expanse of the park - filled with rocky terrain that seems surreal. The distance is so vast, that the ridges below, spotting the plains through the crest of the view, look superimposed on the horizon.
My first thought, was “wow, Texas is incredible.” We live in a state with so many unique geographical differences; it’s truly something to be proud of. On the same trip, my dad informed me of something mind-blowing - Big Bend was once violently affected by massive land shifts.
This is where it gets good - laughing as I write this because I know what I am going to share is ‘nerdy’ at best - around 42 million years ago, an extremely active period of volcanism began, leaving trails of ancient lava flow and ash. The Chisos Mountains were large structures of volcanic magma that pushed upwards through many rock layers, only to be exposed years later.
I am very interested in history, including topography. Needless to say, Big Bend has a way of fulfilling the interests of those seeking gigantic rocks with even bigger stories. Uniquely, rocks have stories to tell, and if you share a love of geology like my dad and I did, those rocks can be filled with memories you share of your loved ones forever. I have visited the park three times to date and plan to go many more, mainly to pay tribute to the memory of my father. He passed away last April, but Big Bend will always be a place that honors his life in a charming and intensely beautiful way.
In his memory, I have placed a small crystal rock, called Desert Rose Selenite, in the east window of the storefront of the news-telegram office downtown. If you would like to take a look at it, I placed it there as a marker, similar to a cairn - a stack of rocks that guide hikers in the right direction on trails too bewildering to retrace. This rock is my simple way of showcasing a small piece of Big Bend’s geological history, along with honoring what my father loved the most, hiking its mountains.
Also in honor of him, I would like to add some of the prehistoric history of the area and how it developed its unique characteristics. When we visited, my dad used to point out the areas of the park that were violently affected from its period of volcanic activity. Over the years, I have done some of my own research on the park’s geographic and topographic history - dating all the way back to prehistoric times.
If you look at a map, you see that Big Bend Ranch State Park, Santa Elena Canyon, and Big Bend National Park all connect Mexico and Texas via the Chihuahuan Desert and the Rio Grande River. The Chihuahuan Desert, relative to a majority of North Central Mexico, interlocks the southwestern border of Texas and ranges northwest until it reaches parts of New Mexico and Arizona.
One of the most lovely spots that highlights this connection is the Santa Elena Canyon. Between both the state and national parks of Big Bend, exists a canyon wall that spans 18 miles in distance. Encasing the Rio Grande, the walls scale upwards of a dramatic 1,500 feet.
On top of experiencing volcanic activity, Big Bend, was also a direct imprint of a geological shift dating back 500 million years. This was the era the Silurian extinction took place. It was the second largest of the five major extinction events. This was when the climate shifted from greenhouse to icehouse.
Although the area is now a relaxing place to take quiet getaways, the park continued to experience massive shifts, including a major landmass collision that occurred 300 million years ago during the Paleozoic Era. After the collision, an erosion of sediment that settled into an ocean trough that extended into the region, was created when North America was still a part of a different continent. The sediment is now the shale and sandstone that blanket the area.
The Marathon Uplift is one of the most beautiful landmarks of this collision, as the area was actually uplifted from the crust, and formed out of many subsequent years of erosion. About 135 million years ago, the area’s elevation was low enough to allow shallow Cretaceous sea water, causing a large amount of limey mud to solidify. The Marathon Basin holds much of the Cretaceous period within it, a geological time capsule tied to a more recent mass extinction.
Subsequently, Big Bend is home to many ancient fossils, including a fossil of the largest flying animal ever, a Quetzalcoatlus northropi. The pterosaur, or very big bird, had a wingspan of a small airplane, but weighed no more than a human adult. Bringing all of this back to the modern state of Big Bend, it now preserves 130 million years of life in its rocks. Today, it supports over 5,000 species of plants and animals.
Within my own interests of the land, come many heartfelt moments that I am reminded of every time I visit. As I hike the park’s trails, I get to rest in the same places my father and I did on the hotter hours of the afternoon. Although he was responsible for creating my love for Big Bend, I think I would have adapted the same passion for it otherwise. Many of my friends are from South Texas, and we all share a love for the desert landscapes, river rapids and hills that abound. If you ever get an urge to feel a sense of beauty in isolation, I recommend visiting Big Bend because it is a trip you will never forget and it holds the footprint of many epic periods in Earth’s history, including an epic period of my own, the life of my father.