National Park Guide: Texas' Big Bend As a young man, Charlie
Chitwood found the remote, raw beauty of Big Bend National Park
intoxicating. Stunning night skies, high desert topography and a
captivating history drew the then-college-age Chitwood back year
after year. The opportunity to spend weeks hiking and rough
camping alone — far from the noise and congestion of Dallas —
made the experience all the better, Chitwood says. "You can (go)
days without seeing people; that had an appeal to me," says
Chitwood, of Jefferson, Texas, who visits the park nearly every
year after making his first visit around 1968. "It's one of my
favorite parks in the world." Nicknamed El Despoblado (the
uninhabited land), Big Bend probably is one of the country's
most biologically diverse parks, spokesman David Elkowitz says.
It leads the nation in six wildlife categories — bats, birds,
butterflies, cacti, reptiles and scorpions, Elkowitz says. "We
are a great place to see wildlife," Elkowitz says. "We have much
more (wildlife) than