Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Guadalupe Mountains National Park is in the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas and contains Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at in elevation. Located east of El Paso, it also contains El Capitan, long used as a landmark by people traveling along the old route later followed by the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach line. Visitors can see the ruins of an old stagecoach station near the Pine Springs Visitor Center. Camping is available at the Pine Springs Campground and Dog Canyon. The restored Frijole Ranch House is now a small museum of local ranching history and is the trailhead for Smith Spring. The park covers and is in the same mountain range as Carlsbad Caverns National Park which is located about to the north in New Mexico. Numerous well-established trails exist in the park for hiking and horse-riding. The Guadalupe Peak Trail offers perhaps the most outstanding views in the park. Climbing over to the summit of Guadalupe Peak, the trail winds through pinyon pine and Douglas-fir forests and offers spectacular views of El Capitan and the vast Chihuahuan Desert. The park also contains McKittrick Canyon. During the Fall, McKittrick comes alive with a blaze of color from the turning Bigtooth Maples, in stark contrast with the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert. A trail in the canyon leads to a stone cabin built in the early 1930s, formerly the vacation home of Wallace Pratt, a petroleum geologist who donated the land in order to establish the park. Dog Canyon, on the northern park boundary at the Texas-New Mexico State line is reached by driving through Carlsbad, NM or Dell City, TX. There is a campground which accommodates tent campers, recreational vehicles, and horse trailers. There is a public corral for livestock available by reservation. On the west side of the park near Dell City, TX lie the impressive and beautiful gypsum sand dunes. Another attraction is the Williams Ranch. Inquire about these two features at the visitor center in Pine Springs.