National Park of Guadalupe Mountains

Location: Texas
Established: September 30, 1972
Size: 86,416 acres (34,971 hectares)

In West Texas, only about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Carlsbad Caverns, lies a gem of a park that few people outside the state have ever heard of, let alone visited. Guadalupe Mountains National Park contains the southernmost, highest part of the 50-mile-long (80-kilometer-long) Guadalupe range. From the highway, the mountains resemble a nearly monolithic wall through the desert. But drive into one of the park entrances, take even a short stroll, and surprises crop up: dramatically contoured canyons, shady glades surrounded by desert scrub, a profusion of wildlife and birds.

Some 80 miles (129 kilometers) of trails can lead the more energetic hiker to Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas (8,749 feet/2,667 meters), and to mountaintops with scattered but thick conifer forests typical of the Rockies hundreds of miles to the north. The range's origins may be surprising too: The Guadalupe Mountains were once a reef growing beneath the waters of an ancient inland sea. That same vanished sea spawned the honeycomb of the Carlsbad Caverns.

Pottery, baskets, and spear tips found in the mountains suggest that people first visited the Guadalupes about 12,000 years ago, hunting the camels, mammoths, and other animals that flourished in the wetter climate of the waning Ice Age. When the Spaniards arrived in the Southwest in the mid-16th century, Mescalero Apache periodically camped near the springs at the base of the mountains and climbed to the highlands to hunt and forage. Both the Apache and Europeans spun legends of fabulous caches of gold in these mountains.

As American prospectors, settlers, and cavalry pushed west, the Apache made the mountainous areas their bases and fought to ward off encroachers. By the late 1880s, however, virtually all the Indians had been killed or forced onto a reservation.

Donations of ranchlands eventually gave impetus to the park. In 1998 the park acquired 10,000 acres (4,050 hectares) adjacent to its then western boundary, including some 2,000 acres (810 hectares) of white gypsum sand dunes and dunes of brick red quartzose, both deposits left by the ancient sea.