Visitors to Big Bend National Park in West Texas will have an extra two months to access the popular Chisos Basin area this year before a lengthy project begins in July to tear down and rebuild the park’s Chisos Mountain Lodge.
The project was originally scheduled to begin in May, but park officials announced this month construction has been pushed back to July.
Once construction begins, the Chisos Basin will be completely closed to visitors. As parts of the project are completed, officials will “assess which areas can be safely reopened to regular public access,” the park said in a press release.
“There is no main reason for the slight delay,” park spokesperson Tom VandenBerg told Marfa Public Radio. “It is a complicated project, and the design and reviews took a little longer than expected.”
For visitors, the delay means more time to easily access some of the park’s most popular trails and lookout points in the Chisos Mountains. Once the project begins, many of those trails will remain open, but will only be accessible by longer hikes.
In early 2024, Big Bend officials released a plan for more limited closures that would have kept campsites and trailheads in the Chisos Basin open, but that plan was later abandoned in favor of completely closing the Basin area to visitor access.
“For safety and efficiency we will be closing the area,” VandenBerg said. “You can imagine all the heavy trucks and equipment up and down the road...especially during the early [demolition] stages.”
The $22 million project to build the new Chisos Mountain Lodge is expected to take at least two years. It was first announced in 2022 and funded by sweeping federal conservation legislation.
The park currently plans to keep the Chisos Basin campground and the nearby visitor center open through June, VandenBerg said.
“There are some unknowns here, and we'll know more once the contractor is selected and their detailed schedule is established,” he said.
Across the U.S., the National Park Service was recently among the latest entities targeted by the Trump administration’s efforts to slash federal spending with the reported firing of about 1,000 NPS employees.
VandenBerg said Big Bend National Park was “not aware of any fiscal delays” to the lodge construction project.
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