When park ranger Oren P. Senter was transferred to Big Bend from Hot Springs National Park in July 1944, he must have felt as if he’d been banished to purgatory. The first park ranger for the newly established park later wrote out the “Ranger’s Lament,” a poem to envelop a bigger than life barrenness. For the Spanish conquistadors, the name “El Despoblado” (“The Uninhabited Land”) burned the intimidating vision of the place into history. Sometimes called “Texas’s gift to the nation,” Big Bend is a nature lover’s El Dorado in the middle of nowhere.
Chisos Basin. Steve Bower/Shutterstock
