Far Western Texas is home to two parks that share the name Big Bend. The more famous is the Big Bend National Park, but this hike is in Big Bend Ranch State Park. This land is part of the Chihuahuan Desert. It is dry and unforgiving. It is astounding to think that once there were viable ranches here, but history is amazing. This hike begins near the Rio Grande (Big River) and quickly enters a maze of canyons eventually leading to a higher ground.
This is a dry desert with not much other than rocks and cacti growing along the trail.
Jose and I hiked this trail in March 2025. Jose said that in Spanish, Rancherias simply means Ranch House. Early in our second day, we arrived at the adobe remains of the old Raze family home who lived and ran a ranch in this canyon.
The Raza family lived in this adobe house and ran a viable ranch.
There are no roads here, only foot paths. Lion Spring near by is the only source of water, but the Raza family had a peach orchard, grew a garden and herded goats.
Not only did they have ranches in the desert, they built fences to stake out their land. Jose in front of a primitive gate in the fence.
Fences once divided this land.
Jose hiking along the jeep rode
Once out of the canyon, the land becomes level enough to allow construction of simple jeep roads. Driving around in 4 wheel drive and ATV seems to be the preferred mode of transportation for most visitors now days, but they miss the springs in the canyons which are too rugged for even jeep roads.
view of the Rancheria spring
The trail leads down into another canyon, and another, bigger spring called the Rancheria Spring comes to view.There are more signs of ranching activities in this section.
Me looking down at the Rio Grande Canyon from our second day camp
We camped the second night on the edge of the plateau overlooking the Rio Grande. Jose took this picture of me.
The Milky Way.
The nights are dark here. Not only there are very few people living in the area, there is and effort to minimize light pollution. I woke up early to take this picture. The orange glow of the Milky Way is probably due to dust practicals in the air caused by the high winds we experienced during this trip. To capture this picture of my tent and the Milky Way, I lit my flashlight inside my tent to create a balance with the sky.
Watching the sun setting over Chisos mountain. It was a very rugged jeep road to get to this point, which was the only campsite available in the entire park.
We planned to hike the Chisos Mountains the following couple of days, but it was spring break and the Big Bend NP was packed with visitors to the point that they wouldn’t let us to the trailhead, even though we had reservations. Funny that there was no one in the Rancherias Loop, but packed in the Chisos.