largely inhospitable wilderness area. It’s not for the sedentary traveler wishing to take things in from the comfort of a vehicle. You’ve got to get out and put boots on the ground to explore its various points of interest. That’s why most of the park’s visitors are serious backpackers and rock climbers, many of whom come to scale 8,751-foot Guadeloupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. The park’s brutal environment may well explain its relatively low visitation figures. A less exhausting way to spend a day in the park entails an easy 1.5-mile hike from the Pine Springs Visitor Center to Frijole Ranch, also known as Guadeloupe Ranch—a restored 1876 ranch complex of seven buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s the park’s leading cultural attraction and features an informative little museum in the old stone ranch house. If you have a few more hours to spare, resume your hike on the 2.3-mile Smith Spring Trail behind the ranch house, a level loop trail leading to the gurgling oasis of Smith Spring and continuing around to sunny Manzanita Spring. There’s some great scenery along the route and it’s also the best place in the park for bird watching. There are no lodging or dining facilities in the park, but you can reserve a tent or RV campsite at one of two campgrounds—at Pine Springs and Dog Canyon. Corrals are also available for visitors bringing horses to the park.
Guadeloupe Mountains National Park, Texas Home to the largest wilderness area and the four highest peaks in Texas, Guadeloupe Mountains has all the qualities required to be a standout national park. Chances are, however, that the 86,416-acre West Texas preserve—often referred to as “Texas’ best kept secret” probably isn’t on your bucket list. Drawing less than 220,000 visitors last year, it’s among the nation’s least-visited national parks—but it isn’t for the lack of scenic splendor and natural diversity. “It is literally one of a kind,” says the park’s Visitor Services Manager, Theresa Moore. “It’s the world’s most extensive Permian fossil reef that’s more than 260 million years old. So that is incredibly unique. And, if you look at it, we start out in the Chihuahuan Desert. But go up 3,000 feet and you’re in the middle of a ponderosa pine forest. The biodiversity of the park is amazing and breathtaking.”
What must be emphasized here is that this park is for the most part a huge, undeveloped, rugged, and
www.nps.gov/gumo | 915-828-3251
Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota Hugging the international border with Ontario, Canada, Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park is a floating landscape of more than 30 glacially carved lakes—connected by streams and fringed with dense boreal forests. The 218,055-acre park was named after French Canadian traders (called voyageurs) who paddled enormous eight-man birch and cedar canoes through the region during the 18th and 19th centuries transporting furs and other trade goods back and forth between Montreal and points further west.
Guadaloupe Mountains National Park.
LONELIEST NATIONAL PARKS
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