Starting in early 2025, visitors to Big Bend National Park will see major changes to how and when they can access the park’s Chisos Basin area, as a planned two-year project to tear down and rebuild the park’s only lodge and restaurant is expected to get underway.
The $22 million project, funded through a sweeping conservation bill Congress approved in 2020, involves the complete demolition and rebuilding of the park’s Chisos Mountain Lodge. Under the plan, an existing visitor’s center and small retail store near the lodge would also be torn down and incorporated into the new building.
“This is probably one of the most impactful projects that the park has seen in many decades, and will probably fundamentally change the way people access and visit the park,” Chad Tinney, the park’s acting superintendent, said at a recent public meeting in Terlingua.
Park officials landed on the plan for a new lodge after concluding that decades of damage from the clay soil shifting beneath the existing building would be too costly to fix with a renovation.
Under the park’s current access plan, all of the Chisos Basin visitor facilities - including the group campground in the area - will be closed to the public once construction begins in the spring of 2025 and will remain closed until the project is finished.
Individual campsites - those close to parking and nearby backcountry sites - and the trail system in the area will remain open to the public, but driving access into the area will be much more restricted.
Tinney said there will “certainly” be impacts to visitors accessing the Chisos Basin even before the construction starts, as contractors begin staging materials.
“But what we’re shooting for is nothing before Spring Break,” he said. “Let’s get through Spring Break and then slowly start moving into this plan, fully implemented in late spring.”
“This is probably one of the most impactful projects that the park has seen in many decades, and will probably fundamentally change the way people access and visit the park."Chad Tinney, Big Bend National Park Acting Superintendent
As 178 parking spaces will be closed throughout the construction, officials plan to limit the amount - and types - of traffic that can enter the area. Traffic control gates will be placed on the road into the Chisos Basin, and the park is considering setting up a shuttle service to bring in hikers and campers.
“All inbound vehicles will be stopped, you can’t just drive up to the basin anymore,” Tinney said, adding that some kind of free-of-charge permit or pass system will be in place for drivers seeking to enter the area.
No visitors will be able to drive into the Chisos Basin between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., Tinney said, but traffic will be allowed to leave the area at any time via an automated gate. RVs, motorhomes and other oversized vehicles - along with bicycles and pedestrians - will not be allowed on the road into the basin throughout the project.
“If you’re camping, and you decide to go down to the Starlight [Theatre] for dinner and you’re not back by 10, you’ve got a big problem,” he said.
Officials have stressed that the access plans are still being developed and may change as the project gets underway.
Outside the park, local officials and businesses are bracing for impacts to the region’s tourism industry.
As the Big Bend Sentinel has reported, some local lodging owners are concerned about impacts to their guests’ park plans, while others have been encouraged to hear that the Chisos Mountains area will still be accessible at all.
At a recent Brewster County commissioners meeting, County Judge Greg Henington said the local tourism council - which runs the county’s “Visit Big Bend” promotional efforts - is planning to spend about 25% less in advertising during the course of the construction project.
Still, Henington said officials would push a public message that “the park is open.”
“Sometimes it’ll trickle down, by the time people read it they’ll go, ‘Oh, let’s don’t go to Big Bend this year, it’s not open,’” he said. “But it is open, for the most part as good as ever.”
Tinney told commissioners that while the lengthy construction plan will have an impact on tourism, “I don’t think that anybody right now can predict what that’s going to look like.”
“I think the plan that we have right now allows roughly the same amount of people to get into the Basin every day, but it’s just going to be a different user group,” he said. “Instead of people who would normally go up to eat dinner and stay in the lodge, instead it’s going to be more geared toward the hikers.”
The national park said it is still accepting public feedback on the access plan.
