Guadalupe Mountains National Park★5.0

How to Get There

From El Paso (114mi) Get on I-10 E. Take US-180 E/US-62 E to Piney Spring Visitors Center in Culberson County. Continue on Piney Spring Visitors Center

Overview

Guadalupe Mountains National Park is a national park in the Guadalupe Mountains, east of El Paso, Texas. The mountain range includes Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,749 feet (2,667 m), and El Capitan used as a landmark by travelers on the route later followed by the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach line. The ruins of a stagecoach station stand near the Pine Springs visitor center. The restored Frijole Ranch contains a small museum of local history and is the trailhead for Smith Spring. The park covers 86,367 acres (134.9 sq mi; 349.5 km2) in the same mountain range as Carlsbad Caverns National Park, about 25 miles (40 km) to the north in New Mexico. The Guadalupe Peak Trail winds through pinyon pine and Douglas-fir forests as it ascends over 3,000 feet (910 m) to the summit of Guadalupe Peak, with views of El Capitan and the Chihuahuan Desert.

The McKittrick Canyon trail leads to a stone cabin built in the early 1930s as the vacation home of Wallace Pratt, a petroleum geologist who donated the land. Dog Canyon, on the northern park boundary at the Texas-New Mexico State line, is accessed via Carlsbad, New Mexico or Dell City, Texas. Camping is available at the Pine Springs campground and at Dog Canyon. The Gypsum sand dunes lie on the west side of the park near Dell City. A rough four-wheel drive road leads to the Williams Ranch.

Park purpose

As stated in the foundation document: Guadalupe Mountains national park preserves, protects, and interprets an area of outstanding geological values, scenery, wilderness, and other natural resources in the northern Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas.

Geography

The Guadalupe Mountains reach their highest point at Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas, with an elevation of 8,751 feet (2,667 m). The range lies southeast of the Sacramento Mountains and east of the Brokeoff Mountains. The mountain range extends north-northwest and northeast from Guadalupe Peak in Texas into New Mexico. The northeastern extension ends about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Carlsbad, near White's City and Carlsbad Caverns National Park; the southwest tip ends with El Capitan about 90 miles (140 km) east of El Paso. The mountains rise more than 3,000 feet (910 m) above the arid floor of the Chihuahuan Desert. The Guadalupe Mountains are surrounded by the South Plains to the east and north, Delaware Mountains to the south, and Sacramento Mountains to the west.

The northwestern extension, bounded by a dramatic escarpment known as "The Rim", extends much further into New Mexico, approaching close to the Sacramento Mountains. The range is bordered on the north by Four Mile Canyon; on the east by the valley of the Pecos River; and on the west by Piñon Creek, Big Dog Canyon, Valley Canyon, Middle Dog Canyon and West Dog Canyon. Much of the range is built from the ancient Capitán Reef, formed at the margins of a shallow sea during the Permian Period. As the range is built up almost entirely of limestone, upland areas have little or no surface water. The only significant surface water is McKittrick Creek, in McKittrick Canyon, which emerges from the eastern side of the massif, just south of the New Mexico border. Elevations at the base of the range vary from 4,000 feet (1,200 m) above sea level on the western side to 5,000 feet (1,500 m) on the east. Several peaks on the southern end exceed 8,000 feet (2,400 m).

Ecology

Three major ecosystems are contained within the park. The Chihuahuan Desert exhibits salt flats, creosote bushes, and honey mesquite on the western side of the park, with low elevations on the eastern side covered with grassland, pinyon pine, and junipers. The canyon interiors, including McKittrick, Bear, and Pine Springs Canyon, exhibit bigtooth maple, velvet ash, chinkapin oak, and other deciduous trees that are fed by springs recharged by mountain streams. Finally, alpine areas more than 7,000 ft (2,100 m) above sea level contain forests of ponderosa pine, Arizona pine, southwestern white pine, Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir, alligator juniper, and small stands of quaking aspen.

The range contains many large cave systems, including Carlsbad Caverns and Lechuguilla Cave. The history of the range includes occupation by ancient Pueblo and Mogollon peoples, and by the Apache and various outlaws in the 19th century.

Fauna

Mammals that inhabit this national park include elk, javelina, gray fox, American black bear, coyote, bobcat, striped and hog-nosed skunk, badger, sixteen species of bat, mule deer, and mountain lion. Birds of this park include great horned owl, chickadee, sparrow, woodpecker, turkey vulture, greater roadrunner, hummingbird, peregrine falcon, golden eagle, wren, and grosbeak.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Guadalupe Mountains National Park", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0